Steve McQueen Net Worth in 2023 (Biography, Net Worth, Career, Personal Life, Age, etc.)

Steve McQueen Net Worth. Terrence Stephen McQueen, also known as the “King of Cool,” was an actor from the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, his antihero reputation, which was reinforced during the height of the counterculture, made him a top box-office draw.

McQueen was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Sand Pebbles. Steve McQueen Net Worth is estimated to be approximately $30 Million.

Steve McQueen Net worth and profile in one glance

Steve McQueen Biography

Early life

Terrence Stephen McQueen was born on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, at St. Francis Hospital. McQueen, who is of Scottish ancestry, was brought up as a Roman Catholic. McQueen’s father, William McQueen, a stunt flyer for a traveling flying circus, abandoned Julia Ann McQueen six months after meeting her.

Julia Ann was an alcoholic, according to several biographers. She left him with her parents in Slater, Missouri, in 1933, since she couldn’t cope with caring for a little child. Following the Great Depression, McQueen and his grandparents moved home with Lillian’s brother, Claude, at his farm near Slater.

On his fourth birthday, Claude gifted McQueen a red tricycle, which he later attributed with kindling his early passion for racing. His mother, who resided in Indianapolis with her new husband, took him there when he was eight years old. McQueen was given a very unusual keepsake to commemorate his departure from his great home.

McQueen, who was dyslexic and partially deaf as a result of a childhood ear ailment, struggled to adjust to his new existence. His new stepfather abused him to the point where he ran away from home at the age of nine to live on the streets. He soon joined a street gang and began performing little crimes.

His mother returned him to Slater since he was unable to manage his conduct. Julia wrote to Claude when he was 12 years old, requesting that her son be returned to her to reside in her new house in Los Angeles, California. Julia had married for the third time after her second marriage had ended in divorce.

Stepping stone into Steve McQueen Net Worth (Career)

Military service

McQueen enrolled in the Marines in 1947, after gaining permission from his mother because he was under the age of 18, and was sent to Parris Island for boot camp. He was deployed to an armored unit after being promoted to private first class. He was demoted to private seven times after reverting to his previous rebelliousness.

He vowed to devote his efforts to self-improvement and adopted the discipline of the Marines. During the Arctic practice, he saved the lives of five other Marines by rescuing them from a tank before it burst through the ice and into the water.

He was assigned to the honor guard, which was in charge of guarding US President Harry Truman’s presidential yacht. McQueen served until he was honorably discharged in 1950. He later stated that his time in the Marines had been enjoyable.

Primary source of Steve McQueen Net worth (Acting)

McQueen began studying acting in New York at Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse and at HB Studio under Uta Hagen with the help of the G.I. Bill. In a 1952 production produced by Yiddish theatre star Molly Picon, he reportedly performed his first conversation on a stage. He also studied acting with Stella Adler around this period, and it was in her class that he met Gia Scala.

McQueen started making money by competing in weekend motorcycle races at Long Island City Raceway, where he bought his first two motorcycles, a Harley-Davidson and a Triumph. He quickly rose to the top of the racing world, winning around $100 per weekend (equal to $1,000 in 2020). In an episode of ABC’s Jukebox Jury from the 1953–1954 season, he played a musical judge.

The 1960s

McQueen starred in the next great Sturges film, 1963’s The Great Escape, which was based on the true account of a historic mass escape from the Stalag Luft III POW camp during World War II. McQueen was unable to conduct the film’s famous motorbike leap due to insurance worries; instead, his buddy and fellow cycle enthusiast Bud Ekins, who resembled McQueen from afar, performed it.

McQueen also acted alongside Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger in 1963. Later, he played Nevada Smith, a character from Harold Robbins’ novel The Carpetbaggers, who had been portrayed by Alan Ladd in a film adaptation of the novel two years before. Nevada Smith, a hugely successful Western action-adventure prequel starring Karl Malden and Suzanne Pleshette, was a huge hit.

Following his portrayal as a poker player in 1965’s The Cincinnati Kid, McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination in 1966 for his performance as an engine-room sailor in The Sand Pebbles, opposite Candice Bergen and Richard Attenborough (with whom he had previously worked in The Great Escape).

The 1970s

In 1971, McQueen participated in the critically panned motor racing thriller Le Mans, which was followed by Junior Bonner, a story of an elderly rodeo rider, in 1972. He played the lead in filmmaker Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway when he met his future wife Ali MacGraw. Following that, he played a physically challenging role as a Devil’s Island prisoner in the 1973 film Papillon, which starred Dustin Hoffman as his tragic sidekick.

McQueen was the highest-paid actor in the world at the time of The Getaway, but after The Towering Inferno, co-starring his long-time professional rival Paul Newman and reuniting him with Dunaway, became a huge box-office success in 1974, McQueen all but vanished from the public eye, focusing on motorcycle racing and traveling around the country in a motor home and on his vintage Indian motorcycle.

He didn’t return to acting until 1978, in the film An Enemy of the People, in which he played a bearded, bespectacled 19th-century doctor in a Henrik Ibsen adaption. The film was never fully distributed in theatres, but it has aired on PBS on occasion.

Tom Horn, a Western adventure about a former Army scout-turned-professional gunman who worked for the big cattle ranchers hunting down rustlers and was later hanged for murder in the shooting death of a sheepherder, and The Hunter, an urban action movie about a modern-day bounty hunter, both released in 1980, were both loosely based on true stories.

Stunts, motor racing and flying

McQueen was a huge fan of motorcycles and race cars. When he got the chance to drive in a movie, he did a lot of his own stunts, such in Bullitt and The Great Escape, where he did some of the car chases and the motorcycle chase.

Although Bud Ekins did the jump over the fence in The Great Escape for insurance reasons, McQueen did get a lot of screen time riding his 650cc Triumph TR6 Trophy motorcycle. It was difficult to locate motorcyclists with McQueen’s level of competence.

McQueen is seen in a German uniform chasing himself on another bike at one point, thanks to editing. Loren Janes did approximately half of the driving in Bullitt.

Personal life

Relationships and friendships

McQueen dated Gia Scala while still at Stella Adler’s school in New York.

He married Filipino actress and dancer Neile Adams on November 2, 1956, and they had a daughter, Terry Leslie, and a son, Chad. In 1972, McQueen and Adams divorced. Adams admitted to having an abortion in 1971, while her marriage was on the rocks, in her memoirs, My Husband, My Friend. Actor Steven R. McQueen is one of McQueen’s four grandkids (who is best known for playing Jeremy Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries and Jimmy Borelli in Chicago Fire).

Around 1959, Mamie Van Doren claimed to have had an affair with McQueen and experimented with hallucinogens with him. Lauren Hutton, an actress, and model, also claimed to have had an affair with McQueen in the early 1960s. During his separation from Adams in 1971–1972, McQueen had an affair with Junior Bonner co-star Barbara Leigh, which resulted in her pregnancy and abortion.

McQueen married Ali MacGraw, his co-star in The Getaway, on August 31, 1973, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1978. During their marriage, MacGraw had a miscarriage. “He was madly in love with her till the day he died,” several acquaintances later stated of McQueen’s one true love, MacGraw.

Lifestyle

McQueen had a two-hour daily training routine that included weightlifting and, at one time, jogging 5 miles (8 kilometers) seven days a week. Pat E. Johnson, a ninth-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do, taught McQueen martial art.

McQueen smoked marijuana practically every day, according to photographer William Claxton, and took a lot of cocaine in the early 1970s, according to author Marc Eliot. He also smoked a lot of cigarettes. McQueen had a habit of drinking too much, and in 1972 he was jailed in Anchorage, Alaska, for driving while inebriated.

Manson connection

The media stated authorities had discovered a hit list with McQueen’s name on it two months after Charles Manson incited the murders of five people, including McQueen’s friends Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. McQueen began carrying a weapon in public, according to his first wife, including at Sebring’s funeral.

Charitable causes

When he agreed to do a picture, McQueen had an odd reputation for requesting free products in abundance from studios, such as electric razors, clothes, and other stuff. McQueen later revealed that he had given these items to the Boys Republic reformatory school, where he had spent his adolescent years. McQueen came to the school on occasion to spend time with the pupils, usually to play pool and talk about his experiences.

Illness and death

In 1978, McQueen developed a chronic cough. He quit smoking and got antibiotic therapy, but his condition did not improve. His shortness of breath became increasingly severe, and a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma, an asbestos-related illness with no known cure, on December 22, 1979, after filming The Hunter.

McQueen gave a medical interview a few months later, blaming his ailment on asbestos exposure. Although McQueen believed that asbestos used in movie sound stage insulation and race drivers’ protective suits and helmets could have played a role, he believed that his illness was more likely caused by massive exposure while removing asbestos lagging (insulation) from pipes aboard a troop ship while in the Marines.

Watch collection

The Rolex Explorer II, Reference 1655, often known as Rolex Steve McQueen in the horology industry, and the Rolex Submariner, Reference 5512, which McQueen was frequently pictured wearing in private times, sold for $234,000 at auction on June 11, 2009, setting a new world record for the type. McQueen wore the watch on his right wrist and was left-handed.

Heuer watches endorsed McQueen as an ambassador. He famously wore a blue-faced Monaco Ref. 1133 in the 1970 film Le Mans, which earned it cult status among watch collectors, and he purchased six of the same model for the film’s shoot.

On December 12, 2020, at a Phillips auction in New York, one of the last six models sold and one of two held in private hands was sold for a record US$2.208 million, making it the most expensive Heuer watch ever sold at auction. Tag Heuer continues to use McQueen’s picture to market its Monaco collection.

Conclusion

In the Hollywood film industry, Steve McQueen is a very accomplished and well-known actor. The Steve McQueen Net Worth is a source of motivation and inspiration. You should also check out – Paul Newman Net Worth.