The moment Steve McQueen terrified Bruce Lee: “McQueen, I’ll bloody kill you”
As cinema began to embrace its commercial potential, the value of the film star grew exponentially from the 1960s, with icons such as Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Steve McQueen emerging to take the industry by storm. It wasn’t much later that Bruce Lee would also break into the Hollywood mainstream, a martial arts master who gained popularity through his influential action movies as well as his curious relationship with McQueen.
Lee became friends with a large selection of the Hollywood set by teaching them his own brand of kung-fu. This would change not only the course of cinema on screen but also away from it. More personally, it would also introduce the young actor to the elite of Tinseltown, including McQueen. Becoming friends in the mid-1960s as Lee’s series The Green Hornet gained popularity, the martial arts icon became infatuated with McQueen’s Porsche 911S Targa and was soon convinced to purchase one himself.
As quoted in Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly, Lee visited Bob Smith’s Volkswagen-Porsche dealership in Hollywood for a test drive of the very same car as McQueen. Once he was finished, he called his friend up and told him, “Steve, I’m going to get a Porsche like yours.”
Worried that Lee had not considered the risk of purchasing such a hot rod, McQueen, who was close to becoming a professional race car driver, offered to take the actor out for a spin in the Porsche, telling Lee, “It’s a hot car, but if you don’t know what you are doing you can get into trouble with this thing”.
While Lee was expecting to be encouraged to buy the high-speed flashy car, McQueen had other ideas, intending to scare the actor off purchasing the vehicle. Using his impressive array of automotive skills, he gave Lee the fright of his life.
“OK, Bruce, you ready?” McQueen told him on the roads of the San Fernando Valley to Mulholland Drive before the Bullitt actor revved the engine and began to speed around the twisting roads of the Santa Monica mountains. “What do you think of this power, Bruce?” shouted over the roar of the engine as he continued to perform dangerous tricks on the tight corners of the Los Angeles hills.
Looking round to check on his friend, the driver saw Lee crouched down in fear in the footwell, shouting, “McQueen, you sonovabitch!…McQueen, I’ll bloody kill you! I’ll kill you, McQueen! I’m gonna kill you!”.
Seeing the rage on Lee’s face, McQueen made his way back home. The two were still at each other’s throats, and both were terrified they would get hurt as a result. “Steve, slow down,” Lee cried out. “You won’t hit me, will you, Bruce?” McQueen pleaded. The two hilariously discussed this until the driver finally pulled over, and Lee announced, “I will never drive with you again, McQueen. Never!”
Featuring two Hollywood icons in a thrilling and farcical cinematic situation, it’s a surprise that this genuine moment of real-life movie magic has never made its way onto the big screen, though one might suggest Quentin Tarantino offered up a rough vision of what might have happened in his movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which pictured Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth go toe-to-toe with Lee.
Of course, the reality of an actual fistfight between the two men would likely see McQueen with as many black eyes as Lee could muster. However, the actor was no slouch; as Lee noted in an interview, “As a fighter, Steve McQueen is good in that department because that son of a gun got that toughness to him. He would say, ‘Alright baby, here I am, man.’ And he’ll do it.”
