"I'm still here you bastages.." Love the movie Papillon. In my top 3 list. Steve lived life his way.
It was said the movie studio who "owned" him forbid him to participate in motorcycle and car events so he entered under the alias Harvey Mushman. Steve said it was to avoid publicity.
He fled the poverty he had grown up in, in Missouri and Indiana, at top speed.
At the age of 14 he was still living in a home for delinquent youths; as a 17-year-old, he enlisted in the Marines as a tank driver.
At the age of 22, he successfully auditioned for one of the coveted spots in Lee Strasberg’s famed Actors Studio in New York – the drama school par excellence in the 1950s.To make ends meet, McQueen worked as a dishwasher and truck driver, and topped up his budget by running races on his Harley-Davidson. The prize money was usually one hundred dollars – a sizable sum at the time.
McQueen scored his first starring role at the age of 27 in the science-fiction horror film The Blob. His pay: $3,000. It was the comparatively modest beginning of an unprecedented rise.
By the end of the 1950s, his income was sufficient to buy his first new car: a black Porsche 356 A Speedster. Like his fellow actor James Dean, McQueen felt drawn to the young brand out of Stuttgart. The Speedster and its 75 hp engine combined day-to-day usability with the qualities of a club racer.
Steve McQueen died at the young age of 50, from cancer in 1980.
Link to an interesting article about his racing career for anyone interested..
McQ: The Man Who Called Himself Harvey Mushman