A life lived on the edge: the multiple near-death experiences of Steve McQueen
Plenty of actors have bought into their own hype over the years, but that was never the case with Steve McQueen. He was nicknamed the ‘King of Cool’, and it wasn’t something he had to work particularly hard to achieve when he was so effortlessly magnetic and endlessly charismatic.
Of course, he made his living playing characters, but he was every bit as cool as he was onscreen when the cameras weren’t rolling. He was one of Hollywood’s biggest, most popular, and highest-paid stars, but when he wasn’t required to be on set, the chances were high that McQueen would be found doing something risky or downright dangerous.
His old rival Paul Newman may have developed a habit of faking his own death to exact revenge on directors he wasn’t getting along with, but McQueen stared the light at the end of the tunnel square in the face for real on multiple occasions. It came with the territory, given his extracurricular interests, but it was something he’d experienced several times before he even made his name as an actor.
The icon may not have performed the most famous stunt of his entire career, but he was very familiar with danger, having been arrested multiple times after dedicating his formative years to petty crime. He enlisted in the military to try and escape his wayward ways, only to brush with death when he was launched from a boat and into freezing cold Arctic waters.
In addition to his acting exploits, McQueen enjoyed racing cars and motorcycles, which regularly placed him in the face of danger. Mixing his vehicular pursuits with drugs was never a wise idea, with the star out of his mind on peyote when he crashed a motorbike in the middle of the desert, leaving him battered and bruised in an ordeal that could have turned out much worse all things considered.
Then there’s the famous incident with The Magnificent Seven co-star Robert Vaughn, which resulted in the pair almost being killed in a Mexican brothel when they tried to vacate the establishment without paying. The very next year, his clogs were almost popped again, this time in another motorcycle crash that left him with a broken leg but could have very easily been fatal.
Arguably, the most famous near-miss of them all involved Charles Manson, with McQueen discovering he was high on the cult leader’s notorious ‘death list’. He’d been friends with Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring for years and planned to have dinner with them at Roman Polanski’s house the very night they were murdered by Manson’s followers.
McQueen always lived his life in the fast lane, almost as if he knew he wasn’t going to be around for the long haul. He eventually passed away from cancer at the age of just 50 in 1980, but he’d already been in his fair share of perilous scrapes in a life where the next near-death experience always seemed to be lurking right around the corner.
