The highest-paid movie actor of the 1960s and early 1970s, Steve McQueen was thought to be the most popular star of his generation. The essence of early 1960s cool, McQueen established his reputation as America's heroic anti-hero in films such as The Magnifi-cent Seven and The Great Escape. The charismatic and macho McQueen went on to become one of the decade's most sought-after leading men, helping to forever define the qualities looked for in cinematic action heroes. Following his untimely death at age 50, McQueen has remained an enduring pop culture icon—that rare performer whose work transcends the era in which he lived and becomes timeless.

The early life of Terence Steve McQueen reads like a movie script—a single mother raises her only child during the Depression after being abandoned by her husband, and young Steve grows up a troubled boy with little...