Steve McQueen Le Mans

In 1970 Steve McQueen was 40 years old and the biggest movie star in the world. But he wanted more. Films such as Easy Rider were ushering in a new era of Hollywood filmmaking, and McQueen wanted greater control over the stories he was telling, and the way they were told. The company he formed to achieve this, Solar Productions, had already had its first big commercial success in 1968 with Bullitt, the film that turned the car chase into a Hollywood staple.

For Solar’s next big project, the actor moved into a chateau near Le Mans with a view to making the ultimate race-driving film. "It’s always been something close to my heart," McQueen explained. "I don’t think that there’s any race driver that can really tell you why he races. But I think he could probably show you."

The plan was for McQueen to enter the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, with British Formula 1 champion Jackie Stewart as his co-driver. The race would be filmed from all perspectives, including a camera car that would actually race alongside the other drivers; the story would come later, written and shot to fit the action.

In March 1970, in preparation, McQueen entered the 12 Hours of Sebring race in Florida, driving the Porsche 908 that was later to become the camera car for Le Mans. He had broken his foot two weeks earlier in a motorbike race, and was wearing a cast. Despite this he still came second, only narrowly beaten by Mario Andretti’s Ferrari.

"For me it was the story of a tragic, flawed hero, the pride of the man at his peak"

Much to his frustration, however, in the end McQueen was prevented from competing at Le Mans for insurance reasons. There were no such qualms about the 45 world-class drivers booked to work on the film, but as British driver David Piper explains, "When I started racing, no one was worried about safety. Almost every race I went to, someone was killed. Sometimes two or three. Life was cheap."

They still filmed the race as planned, and a temporary village was built in the countryside near Le Mans to act as Solar’s base. McQueen’s friend Bob Relyea was there as executive producer, as he had been on Bullitt. The director was John Sturges, who had worked with McQueen on The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. In the press at the time, the project was seen as a certain hit. As Sturges later said, "We had the star, we had the drivers, we had an incredible array of technical support. We had everything. Except the script." As it turned out, that was just the start of their problems.

McQueen’s wife, Neile, and their two children, Chad and Terry, aged 10 and 11 respectively, came over to France for the summer, but the marriage disintegrated during the shoot. Despite teams of writers competing to come up with a script, no storyline was ever settled, so they carried on filming the drivers going round the Le Mans track at 220mph in every possible permutation.