Steve McQueen’s Regret: The Film He Couldn’t Stand
Steve McQueen, despite his legendary reputation, always regretted his role in the 1958 sci-fi film The Blob. Although it was a box office success, McQueen never warmed to it and wished he’d given it a miss.
Before Steve McQueen became a household name, he had to take whatever roles came his way, just like any up-and-coming actor. It wasn’t until he’d made it big that he could actually pick and choose his projects. But there was one early gig that stuck with him for all the wrong reasons, and he never quite got over it.
McQueen’s rise to fame wasn’t exactly a quick sprint. He had the grit and the talent, but it took a while for the right opportunity to come along. His stint as the lead in the TV series Wanted Dead or Alive from 1958 to 1961 helped get his face out there, but back then, making the leap from telly to the big screen was a tough ask. Luckily, The Magnificent Seven hit cinemas before the show wrapped up, giving everyone a proper look at what he could do in a feature film. By that point, he’d already racked up six other film credits, so he wasn’t exactly green, but this was the one that really put him on the map.
From TV Star to Silver Screen Icon
After The Magnificent Seven, McQueen’s career just kept picking up steam. He landed a spot on the A-list with The Great Escape, scored an Oscar nomination for The Sand Pebbles, and cemented his reputation as the coolest bloke in Hollywood with The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt. By the time he was trading barbs with Paul Newman on the set of The Towering Inferno, he was the highest-paid actor in the business.
But even as he reached the top, there was one project from his past that he couldn’t shake. It wasn’t just any old film – it was his first time as the main attraction, and it haunted him for years. That film was 1958’s The Blob, a low-budget sci-fi flick about a jelly-like alien causing chaos in small-town America. Despite its popularity and influence, McQueen couldn’t stand it.
The Blob: A Box Office Hit He Hated
When he first got his hands on the script, McQueen had a bad feeling.
“It was shit!”
he told Michael Munn. His wife at the time, Neile Adams, tried to convince him otherwise.
“But Neile said, ‘Why not do it?’ I said, ‘It’ll kill my career’. I said, ‘No, it won’t. No one’ll see it. No one’ll know you were in it’. I figured she was right.”
Turns out, she wasn’t.
“Man, everyone saw it,”
he later admitted, clearly unimpressed by the film’s unexpected success.
To make matters worse, McQueen had the chance to take 10% of the profits but knocked it back, thinking the film would flop. Instead, he took a flat fee of $3,000. The film ended up pulling in over $4 million at the box office on a shoestring budget of $110,000. If he’d taken the deal, he would’ve made a tidy sum, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
Never Lived It Down
Even as his career soared, McQueen never changed his mind about The Blob. In one of his last interviews before he passed away in 1980, he was asked about the film. His response was blunt:
“I don’t want to talk about that movie.”
For all his later success, that early misstep was something he’d rather have left behind.