A really interesting essay by Matt Feeney about Steve McQueen. McQueen fans (and I am one of them): check it out. He is one of the most mysterious of movie stars – his appeal (at least in my opinion) goes under that strange and rare heading of “Magic”. Whatever it was about his face, and not just his face – but more importantly how the camera saw his face … whatever you want to call it, that alchemy was magic.
Feeney describes perfectly, I think, where McQueen’s appeal comes from (because although he is, most certainly, an actor people LOVE … and many people list some of his movies as their favorite movies EVER) … his is an elusive talent. Even the directors who worked with him said that about him. He was mercurial, touchy, and completely relied upon spontanaiety. McQueen could not rehearse. He was a “first take- only take” kind of actor. After repetition, he lost the magic. This is not a criticism. It’s just something that is really interesting. Steve McQueen refused to even do ‘walk throughs” of the set before a day’s shooting. Some actors like to stroll around, try out the doors, walk through the space … just to get familiar. Like: if the set is supposed to represent their character’s kitchen – then of course the room should be familiar to you, right? You should know automatically that the door to the dining room swings in, not out, right? All that stuff. McQueen didn’t care about any of that stuff. He knew, instinctively, that his talent was mercurial, and … unreliable. So he kept himself, as much as he could, in a state of complete unknowingness – he relied on the spontaneity of the first time. As you can see from his performances, his instincts about himself were pretty much spot on. Directors who forced McQueen to rehearse got bad acting out of the guy. Best to just leave him alone.
Mark Rydell (who directed On Golden Pond) but also directed McQueen in … The Rievers, I think – spoke at my school and talked extensively about working with the guy. How much McQueen tested directors, what a son of a bitch he could be, how difficult he could be, how broken he was … McQueen looked for a father figure in every single man he met, and he looked for one in Rydell. When Rydell made him do something he might not have wanted to do, he would throw a temper tantrum – as though he were a toddler, and Rydell were the “bad father”. He was really messed up and weirdly fragile, for all his tough-guy stuff, and riding around on a motorcycle. Rydell said something very interesting (and again: this is in no way a criticism): “Steve McQueen was not a great actor. But he was a great movie star. One of the greatest we have ever had.”
You can teach someone how to be more a competent actor. But you can never teach anyone to have even a smidgeon of what Steve McQueen had. It’s innate. If you don’t have it? Learn to live without it and learn to work with what you got … because it cannot be taught, bought, borrowed or stolen.
Feeney writes:
McQueen cultivated his own mythology through a strenuously aloof style of acting that is not without its critics. David Thomson, for one, observes a certain “dullness” about McQueen. Perhaps, but it was an especially radiant sort of dullness. With McQueen, it’s hard to decide whether you hardly notice him, or you hardly notice that you never take your eyes off of him. He had one of the greatest of all movie faces, even though he wasn’t perfectly handsome. The broad masculine nose and deep leathery creases around his taut mouth didn’t connect to those scary blue eyes. What brought his features alive on-screen were his wide cheekbones and a narrow tapering chinthe kind of triangular bonework more commonly associated with female beauty. Shot from certain high angles, McQueen could resemble an extremely macho elf.
He definitely had a face made to be in the movies!
More on his craft:
As an actor, McQueen seemed to emit no excess, no psychic surplus that might register as hamminess or irony. Yet he was a deeply insecure and conflicted man, and fanatically willful about his craft. Watching the laconic, slow-to-react title characters in The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and Bullitt (1968), it’s easy to imagine that the performance is just Steve McQueen showing up and acting like himself. But when Steve McQueen showed up and really acted like himself, it wasn’t pretty: He was a hothead and a paranoid, a grimly compulsive womanizer and a prolific druggie far ahead of his time (according to the biographer Christopher Sanford, McQueen was into LSD and peyote by the early ’60s and later became a serious cokehead).
McQueen is in the very short list of actors (Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper) who, upon receiving any script, sat down and cut out most of his own lines. He knew that he could do more with a turn of his head than another actor could do with 10 explanatory lines. His power and magnetism lay not in his voice, or even in the PARTS he played … it lay in that face, and what it could convey, with absolutely no language.
And here, I think, Feeney makes a genius point – genius:
The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great McQueen mystiquethe “cool” that was somehow so feverish, the poker face that was somehow so animatedcame from his half-successful effort to hide it.
YES!!! A true movie star will always have secrets, and will never reveal everything. There is a mystery at the heart of Marilyn Monroe that keeps people coming back. Same with Cary Grant. Clark Gable. They do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. They are hiding things. Their success comes from the “half-successful efforts” to hide it.
Perfect example: Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings. I babbled about it ad nauseum here. Geoff Carter has to be the crankiest leading man in all of cinematic history. He is a big CURMUDGEON. And yet … there are flashes … moments … momentary looks in his eyes (that great late-night scene with Jean Arthur) … when you see his loneliness. The sensitivity at the heart of this cranky macho guy. But he never makes a big deal out of it, and Cary Grant never EVER fetishizes his own emotions. EVER. (So many actors do that these days. They have a self-important aura around every feckin’ tear they shed. As though we should give them a goddamn medal for having a heart and a soul.) Cary Grant HID his emotions … and therefore, we loved him for it. Because we knew they were there anyway.
Very human. REAL human beings don’t walk around showing us their emotions all the time. Or if they do? They probably should be institutionalized. Real human beings try to hide their vulnerability. Doesn’t mean we can’t see it all the same … but that’s not the point.
McQueen had that cool aloof thing going on … but there’s a reason why he has such massive appeal to not only men but also women. There was something cracked underneath the exterior, something sweet, and in need of the female. But he would NEVER broadcast this, or fetishize it. He was too busy trying to HIDE that vulnerability, so we wouldn’t guess his weaknesses.
This duality, this inner contradiction, is part of what makes a great movie star. He keeps us guessing. We want to get “in there” with him, but he never satisfies us completely.
It’s deeee-lish.
Bear with me here –
Marilyn Monroe: “The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great Monroe sexuality that was somehow so feverish, the suggestiveness that was somehow so animated came from her half-successful effort to hide it.”
Cary Grant: “The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great Grant mystique the “suavity” that was somehow so perfect, the attitude that was somehow so debonair – came from his half-successful effort to hide it.”
Katherine Hepburn: “The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great Hepburn mystique the “hauteur” that was somehow so standoffish, the class that was somehow so strident came from her half-successful effort to hide it.”
Judy Garland: “The raw inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability was there all along, and the great Garland effervescence the “talent” that was somehow so feverish, the joie-de-vivre that was somehow so animated came from her half-successful effort to hide it.”
What do you think, Sheila? Might this be what’s ultimately so appealing about some of these greats? The underlying inner core of soulfulness and vulnerability, and the different ways they find to (half-successfully) hide it?
stevie – hahaha I do! I really think that that is probably the only thing all the greats really have in common.
It’s so true. That combination of vulnerability and hiding the vulnerability is what keeps us hooked … they all have it!
Oh, Red, I’m so into it!!! WOW! Blowing me away …
This is the same trait at the heart of all the gay icons, from Marilyn and Judy to Liza (what’s more vulnerable than a person who looks like a bloated tic?), to Madonna (hard to glimpse her vulnerability under all that self-confidence but it’s definitely there somewhere), et al.
Hell, I think this even applies to “the Guys” doesn’t it, Red? After all, it’s George Washington’s vulnerability and uncertainty under all that military and leadership genius that makes him so lovable.
It’s the ruthless, invulnerable, hail-the-conquering-hero ones throughout time that leave me cold. Alexander the Great? I prefer Alexander the Vulnerable-Under-a-Mask-of-Bravado.
Who else falls into this category?
Anne Bancroft – check.
Atticus Finch – check.
Marlon Brando – check.
Judy Holliday – check.
Merriweather Lewis – check.
Batman – check.
Jesus of Nazareth – check.
Margaret Cho – check.
Curt Schilling (late Oct. 2004) – check.
At least with film – what is ambiguous is what is interesting. Total certainty makes for really boring cliched acting. Nobody wants to watch that!
And I definitely like it when someone’s humanity is revealed – even if they’re trying to hide it. And yes, stevie – that’s why I love to read the primary source material of the American Revolution – that’s why John and Abigail’s letters are so damn MOVING to me no matter how many times I read them.
Yes!
Samwise Gamge – check.
Oh, I have a great one – maybe my favorite one ever:
Russell Crowe’s character Bud White in LA Confidential – check check CHECK!
Great one! OMG – exactly.
And Russell Crowe himself – checkeroo.
I love Samwise, too. What an awesome character.
Humphrey Bogart – check. Gotta get him on there. Think of that last scene in Casablanca!!
Actually, I’m gonna go out on a limb here, but bear with me:
Angelina Jolie – check!
Yeah, Frodo is TOO vulnerable, like an unshelled oyster; there’s no self-protective stance that makes the vulnerability touching. Samwise, however, keeps putting the armor on and getting on with it, fears notwithstanding.
Right. Good point. That’s why James Dean can’t be on here. Too open. No protection.
Oh yes, Bogart —- Here’s looking at you, kid! Perfect example. Also Bogart in the the African Queen!!! I mean, shivering and covered with leeches, after all his manly bluster, being comforted by Kate —
Angelina – YES! YES!
Yeah, man – that leech scene. I’m tellin’ ya – I think that’s the best acting he’s ever done. After seeing that scene, I have to remind myself that those things aren’t real – his horror is so palpable.
YES about James Dean, all oyster. Must have shell.
Obiwan, check.
I’m gonna stay with the star wars theme, and say Han Solo. Come on … the tenderness of the kiss in the asteroid?? That was the oyster. But damn, he had a hard shell!! Hence: my deep and abiding love for that character.
I love your selection of Angelina Jolie. Her vulnerability isn’t that easy to see, and she’s tried on lots of masks to hide it. Right now she’s doing the “cool as a cucumber professional grown-up” number and it’s about as good as anyone’s done in a long time, but it’s almost like Jon Voight’s naked vulnerability is such a part of her. Sometimes it’s HIS (tear-filled) eyes looking out of HER face. Awesome.
I mean, God, did you see Gia??? That’s a classic example of a girl with a tough hard shell, but an aching vulnerable inside. She was a genius in that movie. I don’t use that word lightly. I really think she’s kind of a genius.
Also Girl Interrupted – and that kind of dumb movie she did called The Bone Collector. She was very good in that movie – it was kind of a nothing part, but she had to play a cop in over her head. But brave. Forced to be brave. She was wonderful. Stole the movie from Denzel, in my humble opinion.
I’m a huge fan.
Han Solo – snap! Great one.
Okay, here’s a weird one – Nixon. His vulnerability at the end, with the beach-walking and phlebitis and humiliation and bravura attempts to rewrite his history in a more flattering light, after a lifetime of putting on the mask of intellectual superiority/Kennedy inferiority — i mean, I still don’t love him but if there’s any part of him that is tender to me, that’s it.
Stevie –
Wow. You’ve taken the game to a whole new level with Nixon.
So … hmmm … in a weird way, Darth Vader applies, don’t he?? There’s no better way to hide your vulnerability than becoming the Dark Lord or an entire galaxy.
Angelina was incredible in Gia. Just incredible.
Patricia Clarkston in High Art – check.
Oh my, Darth Vader – not as played by pout boy Hayden Christianson, but as voiced by James Earl Jones. Talk about vulnerable. Under all that life-support crap lies the remains of the man whose vulnerability was too much to bear.
King Lear – check.
Lady MacBeth – check.
Kate the Shrew – check.
Okay, here’s a HUGE one – Fred Astaire, who always let you peek at his vulnerability.
Audrey Hepburn – yes. Grace Kelly – no.
Marilyn Monroe – yes. Jane Russell – no.
Princess Diana – no, too oystery.
Elizabeth II – no, too much shell.
Elizabeth I – YES YES YES!
As played by Glenda Jackson – no, too much shell. Brilliantly done, but too much shell.
As played by Kate Blanchett – yes!
Is there not a book about Hollywood and actors in you somewhere? Maybe? I think your writing about these topics is among your best, and I can’t be the only one.
//”Steve McQueen was not a great actor. But he was a great movie star. One of the greatest we have ever had.”//
Exactly. IMHO he was a barely adequate actor. Buthe had that quality – The Cool – that made whatever he did on screen absolutely riveting.
Dan – thanks for the compliment!!
I know you guys are having a relatively serious conversation, but this is primarily making me think “mmmmmm…oysters.” ;-)
DaveJ:
“relatively” is the key word in your comment. hahahaha
Oysters, mmmmmm … indeed!
Best oysters ever = Acme Oyster House on Iberville Street in the French Quarter. You simply MUST go.
Hey, I got to this party late, but its a great one.
In the Sandford bio of McQueen, Sandford talks extensively of McQueen’s being one of the only actors who liked less lines, and who would say to directors, “I can do this better without words.” My feeling is that it takes a certain amount of focus to enjoy his acting. If you’re looking elsewhere in the frame, you miss alot of it. You think, oh he’s standing still so I’ll look around and you miss some thing bubbling under the surface.
The blessing is that you rarely can look away because his presence is a magnet. “Sand Pebbles” is a classic example of all that stuff under the surface. He may not have had the perfect technique thing, but he WAS his performance. Great post, red.