“He wasn’t an actor”: the co-star who called Steve McQueen a “pain in the ass”
Despite doing the same job at the end of the day, not every actor gets to be a movie star. Conversely, not every movie star is renowned for being the greatest actor, with one co-star viewing the legendary Steve McQueen as falling into that exact camp.
Nobody can argue with his success, though, with McQueen becoming the single highest-paid performer in Hollywood in the mid-1970s, as his megawatt charisma shone through in everything from The Magnificent Seven and The Thomas Crown Affair to Bullitt and The Getaway.
The best way to shine a light on the dichotomy between acting greatness and movie star success is to compare McQueen to his peer, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Towering Inferno co-star, and repeated source of his ire Paul Newman.
They were both among the most popular and bankable leading men of their shared era, but whereas McQueen only had a solitary Academy Award nomination to his name for The Sand Pebbles, Newman netted ten nods, won a competitive Oscar, and was awarded two more honorary prizes.
Nobody’s going to argue that the former isn’t a generation-defining star, but it’s hard to state a compelling case to call him a thespian of the highest degree. Newman was, however, and James Garner was more than happy to point out McQueen’s shortcomings as a performative presence. Of course, he made that assessment on the set of a box office success and classic adventure because that’s how the leading man made his mark.
In his memoir The Garner Files, McQueen’s co-star in The Great Escape offered a disparaging comparison to Marlon Brando, who he’d worked with previously on the 1957 drama Sayonara. “Like Marlon Brando, he could be a pain in the ass on set,” Garner said of McQueen. “Unlike Brando, he wasn’t an actor. He was a movie star, a poser who cultivated the image of a macho man.”
The difference between actors and movie stars can be anywhere from subtle to stark, but Garner was in no doubt over which camp he believed McQueen fell into. “He had a persona he brought to every role, and people loved it, but you could always see him acting,” he continued. “That’s the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned.”
Reflecting on the “stubborn little cuss” he shared the screen with in The Great Escape, Garner revealed that director John Sturges even added additional motorcycle stunts into the story to “pacify” McQueen’s need to showcase his action hero credentials.
In his colleague’s mind, he was more concerned about looking cool and stealing the show than delivering a complex, layered, and nuanced performance. Not that anyone complained when the part of Virgil Hilts ended up going down as one of his most memorable, regardless of how dismissive Garner was of his opposite number’s acting abilities.
Watch the trailer for the iconic Steve McQueen film The Great Escape below.