Steve McQueen Movies

Steve McQueen in 1968's Bullitt
Steve McQueen in 1968’s Bullitt

Want to know the best Steve McQueen movies?  How about the worst Steve McQueen movies?  Curious about Steve McQueen’s box office grosses or which Steve McQueen movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Steve McQueen movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Steve McQueen (1930-1980) became a major star in the early 1960s. During a 14 year time period he made classic movies like The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt, Papillon, The Sand Pebbles, The Towering Inferno and my favorite The Great Escape. By the middle of the 1970s he was no longer making movies.

In 1980 he released his final two movies Tom Horn and The Hunter. However at the age of 50 he passed away after a battle with cancer. Steve McQueen’s role in The Sand Pebbles was the only time he was nominated for an Academy Award®. He did receive 4 Golden Globe® nominations. Those films were Love With The Proper Stranger, Papillon, The Sand Pebbles and The Reivers.

His IMDb page shows 41 acting credits from 1953-1980. This page will rank 26 Steve McQueen movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Cameos, television appearances, straight to DVD movies and shorts were not included in the rankings.

Steve McQueen in 1963's The Great Escape
Steve McQueen in 1963’s The Great Escape…this is easily my favorite Steve McQueen movie.

Steve McQueen Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Steve McQueen Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort by Steve McQueen’ co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Steve McQueen movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost…(in millions)
  • Sort Steve McQueen movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Steve McQueen movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Steve McQueen movie received.
  • Sort Steve McQueen movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive
 
Steve McQueen in 1958's The Blob
Steve McQueen in 1958’s The Blob

Famous Steve McQueen miscues.

1. When offered his role in The Blob, he had two choices. (1) Three thousand dollars for his performance or (2) 10% of the profits. McQueen took the three thousand dollars. The Blob was an unexpected hit. Costing McQueen millions of dollars.

2. Turned down the lead male role in Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

3. Turned down the chance to be in Frank Sinatra’s Ocean’s Eleven.

4. Turned down the chance to be the Sundance Kid, in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. He wanted to be higher billed than Paul Newman.

5. Turned down the lead male role in Apocalypse Now.

6. Turned down the lead male role in Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

7. Turned down the lead male role in The French Connection.

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
 

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156 thoughts on “Steve McQueen Movies”

  1. Love the The Great Escape so much I rode down to Pfronten to see the original Hut and other locations.

    Reply

  3. I met Steve in late 1965, after Mr. Wise hired me to be Steve’s photo double and stand-in during location filming in Taiwan. Steve was the real deal. As filming on the island wound down, the cast and crew readied for the move to Hong Kong for additional location filming. I had a “Greetings” letter from Uncle Sam and had to head in the other direction, to boot camp in the US. Steve, Neile and I exchanged letters and post cards during my army training and subsequent duty in Vietnam. After Vietnam, my new wife and I were invited to the McQueens, a real celebration for us. Steve picked me for stand-in and photo double work on the Getaway during filming in San Marcos, TX. Steve was the real deal, forget about the ‘hollywood’ B.S. He and Neile were kind and generous when they didn’t have to be, when no one but my immediate family were rewarded by their friendship. RIP Steve, throw one back with Jimmy Garner and Paul pal.

    Reply

    1. Hey John Norris….wow….thanks for sharing that great experience with Steve McQueen and his wife. It is always amazing how the bad stories always get told…yet the good stories like this hardly see the light of day. Sounds like you had some great movie experiences on the set of The Sand Pebbles and The Getaway. Sounds like you might have been his good luck charm as those two movies were among the most successful of his career. That is cool trivia that you were the stand-in for Steve McQueen on the only movie he received an Oscar nomination for. My father was fortunate enough to meet McQueen a few times too…..and my father always said he was indeed the King of Cool. Thanks for your service to our country and thanks providing one of the best comments on our website.

      Reply

  5. 1 When Steve McQueen first came on the scene he was considered an all-round likeable person but after he became a major star some of his conduct such as his attitude towards Paul Newman caused revised opinions and in those days I even heard him described in some quarters as a “vulgarian”.

    2 Ali MacGraw seemed to suggest that during their marriage in the 70s he became eccentric and reclusive. In the mid 70s he withdrew from a project with Barbara Streisand because he could not get along with her.

    3 He had hits such as The Great Escape (1963) and Nevada Smith (1966) but as late as 1965 he was accepting second billing to Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger so that some historians have suggested that his VERY TOP STAR years were during the relatively short period from 1968 with Bullitt until 1974 with The Towering Inferno.

    3 His overall box office gross was not vertiginous and after his sad premature death in 1980 it was suggested that had he lived he might have had more big hits. That can not be guaranteed however as he largely disappeared after 1974 and when he re-surfaced in the 1978-1980 period his last three films did very poor box office.

    4 In terms of on-screen time the lead role in Apocalypse Now was Captain Willard played by Marty Sheen and Col Kurtz though the focal point of the film appeared only towards the end.
    Nevertheless an interview with McQueen suggested that it was the Kurtz role that he was offered as in the interview he discussed how differently he would have played that role from the Brando interpretation and he never mentioned the Willard role.

    5 Another good update of the career Steve did have..

    Reply

    1. Hey Bob.
      1. Glad you found our McQueen update.
      2. I wonder what the name of the McQueen/Streisand movie was going to be…..that could have been interesting. I could easily see McQueen in the Robert Redford role in the Way We Were.
      3. I think he was a star from 1960 until his death in 1980…..but 1963 (when the Great Escape came out) to 1975 he was a superstar. When he signed onto Love With A Proper Stranger (1963) Wood was the bigger star. The Great Escape was released while he was filming Love With A Proper Stranger…and it shot McQueen into super stardom. He might have been second billed to Wood but after The Great Escape hit…he never did that again.
      4. 12 of his biggest hits happened between between 1963 and 1974. And most were pretty big hits. It is a shame he turned down so many roles from 1974-1979…..some of those passes turned out to be monster hits.
      5. I could see him as either the Sheen role or the Brando role in A. Now….but I imagine it would be a way different movie if FFC had convinced him to do the movie.
      Great movie insights about McQueen…thanks for sharing them.

      Reply

      1. BRUCE:

        1 The envisaged McQueen/Streisand vehicle would have been The Gauntlet (1977) which as you know became an Eastwood/Locke flick.

        2 I always knew that The Cincinnati Kid (1965) was originally scripted as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy as ‘The Man’ with McQueen taking 2nd billing as the Kid and that Tracy withdrew because of ill health..

        3 What I didn’t know until recently was that Cary Grant was then considered for the part of The Man but Steve’s existing iron clad contract guaranteed that nobody but Spence could be billed above him in that movie and Cary wouldn’t accept 2nd billing, quite rightly in my view given his long years as very top box office star and Steve being a relative newcomer.

        4 However it’s a pity Steve let ego get the better of him because Grant/McQueen would have been a mouth-watering experience. Anyway thanks for all the exchanged info about Steve’s career.

        BOB

        Reply

        1. Hey Bob.
          1. Well I can easily see McQueen in the Eastwood role….but can’t see Babs in the Sondra Locke role at all. I imagine the Locke got reduced when Streisand back out of the project.
          2. I knew about Tracy in Cincinnati Kid….but this is this the first I have heard about Grant being up for the role…..well it all worked out in the end….with Edward G. Robinson giving an Oscar winning performance….yet somehow he did not even get nominated.
          3. I agree a McQueen/Grant movie would have been special. It would have been a better swan song for Grant…versus Walk Don’t Run.
          Thanks for the input….hope your vacation is awesome.

          Reply

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