The iconic Steve McQueen role written for Sean Connery: “I’m not sure it would have been better”
Even though they were born almost exactly five months apart and were renowned as two of Hollywood’s coolest and most charismatic stars during the same era, it’s hard to imagine Sean Connery and Steve McQueen competing for the same roles.
The former was an overnight sensation when the relative unknown turned Ian Fleming’s James Bond into an instant cinematic and cultural icon in 1962’s Dr No, the same year the latter cemented his own action hero credentials by leading Don Siegel’s explosive war movie Hell Is for Heroes.
Whereas McQueen epitomised and embodied all-American superstardom and weaved between crowd-pleasing pictures like The Great Escape and Bullitt and acclaimed, award-nominated turns in Love with the Proper Stranger and The Sand Pebbles, Connery wasn’t all that interested in cracking the A-list.
Of course, it was inevitable when he played 007 in six hit blockbusters, but when he wasn’t sporting the secret agent’s signature tux and drinking shaken-not-stirred martinis, he sought to test himself in smaller films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, Sidney Lumet’s prison drama The Hill, and The Red Tent, an adventure flick co-produced by Italy and the Soviet Union.
It’s difficult to imagine Connery headlining Bullitt, The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, or Papillon, just as it’s equally hard to envision McQueen as Bond, Robin Hood, or Agatha Christie’s Colonel Arbuthnot. However, one of the most iconic roles McQueen ever played was scripted with Connery in mind, and it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch for the statuesque Scotsman.
Connery could do the well-dressed debonair thing in his sleep, and casting him as a bored and wealthy playboy who plots an elaborate heist would have made good use of his charm. And yet, despite being written specifically with the intention of having him play the lead role, it was McQueen who ended up leading 1968’s The Thomas Crown Affair.
“I wrote it for Sean Connery,” Alan Trustman told the New York Daily News. “When they cast Steve McQueen, I objected violently and claimed that he could not deliver the dialogue. So I spent a week at United Artists in New York, 16 hours a day, screening every piece of film on McQueen and making lists of what he liked and what he didn’t like, and then I rewrote it for him with him in mind.”
Every time Connery was offered the title character, all he’d say was, “I’ll think about it.” When he thought about it too long, the studio went to McQueen instead. While Trustman would have preferred the part to be played by the guy he actually wrote it for, the benefit of hindsight made him feel more confident that the right choice was made.
“It would have been very different,” he mused of Connery’s The Thomas Crown Affair. “And I’m not sure it would have been better.” Ironically, when the film was remade three decades later and needed a star, it was another James Bond who was drafted in when Pierce Brosnan took top billing in the do-over.
