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Steve McQueen

The Salvation of an American Icon

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

An intimate look at movie star Steve McQueen's reckless life of fast cars, women, and drugs all the way up to his dramatic life-change and terminal cancer diagnosis.

Join Greg Laurie as he takes a cross-country drive in his 1968 Highland Green Ford Mustang 390 GT through the canyons of Malibu, the alleys of Hollywood, the wide and open roads of the Midwest, and the streets of New York as he traces the woolly geography of actor Steve McQueen's life, relationships, career, and spiritual journey. This iconic muscle car was the vehicle McQueen drove in his most raucous and enduring film, Bullitt.

In the 1960s, McQueen was, according to box office receipts, the biggest movie star of his generation and one of the coolest men to ever walk the planet. Greg Laurie was a teen at the time and an ardent fan of "The King of Cool," first mesmerized by McQueen in 1963's The Great Escape. Like millions of cinema fans, Greg developed a lifelong fascination with the actor. Now he has a chance to tell McQueen's story.

McQueen was a complex, contradictory man who lived the same way he drove his motorcycles and cars: fearlessly, ruthlessly, and at top speed. After a lifetime of fast cars, women, and drugs, McQueen took a surprising detour.

In this book, Laurie thoughtfully interviews Steve McQueen's friends, co-stars, associates, widow, and pastor to tell of the dramatic life-change for the actor in the spring of 1979—six months before McQueen was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

What were the critical steps that led McQueen to make such a life-altering decision? Perhaps more importantly, why is that part of his story so rarely told? This book answers these questions.

Greg Laurie will follow the seeds of Christianity that were sown throughout McQueen's improbable life where a Light finally shone into the darkness of his troubled life. These seeds miraculously germinated, allowing McQueen to see that redemption through Jesus Christ is a lasting truth more glittering and real than any magic of the entertainment industry.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 3, 1994
      McQueen (1930-1980) was born in Indiana and grew up fatherless with an alcoholic mother. After stints in a reform school and the Marine Corp., he landed in New York City where he caught the acting bug. He soon won an acting scholarship and in 1956 got his break in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me . That same year he met and married dancer Neile Adams. The TV series, Wanted: Dead or Alive , brought him to the attention of director John Sturges who cast him in The Magnificent Seven . Three years later The Great Escape made him a star. The strength of this book lies in the history the author has compiled on McQueen's 28 films--their genesis, their filming and how the critics and the paying public responded. Terrill also delves into the offscreen side of McQueen: his passion for motorcyles, fast cars and bedding his female co-stars. The author goes on to chronicle McQueen's frequent, admitted use of LSD, marijuana and cocaine; his revulsion of homosexuals; his divorce and his subsequent marriages to actress Ali McGraw and model Barbara Minty; and, finally, his battle against lung cancer. Terrill, a dealer of Beatles' memorabilia, makes a solid impression with his first book. Photos.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 27, 2010
      Terrell reprises the warts-and-all portrait of the mercurial Steve McQueen, aided by 32 pages of intimate photographs. Building on the foundation of his 1993 Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel, he delves into the actor's turbulent childhood with an alcoholic, free-loving mother and an absentee father, making for a combustible personality, constantly fighting for his sense of self, not trusting easily, and becoming an at-risk teen in trouble with the law. After a stint with the Marines, McQueen broke on the New York theater scene with an Actors Studio pedigree, a highly rated TV series, and a collection of blockbuster films including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Getaway, and Bullitt. Terrell's psychologizing of his subject can be too much at times, but in the end he presents an engaging chronicle of McQueen's lifelong inner demons, competitiveness, single-mindedness, obsessive desire to triumph, romantic misfires with women, and final dogged battle with cancer.

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  • English

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