Steve McQueen’s Biggest Regret: The Film He Couldn’t Stand
Steve McQueen, the legendary 'King of Cool,' always looked back on his role in the 1958 sci-fi hit The Blob with regret, famously calling it 'shit.' Despite its box office success, McQueen never warmed up to the film that haunted his early career.
Before Steve McQueen became a Hollywood icon, he had to take whatever roles he could get. Like many actors starting out, he didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing projects. It wasn’t until he reached the top of the industry that he could finally steer his own path. But there was one early film that stuck with him for all the wrong reasons.
Early Struggles and a Breakthrough
McQueen’s journey to stardom wasn’t instant. He had the talent and drive, but it took time for the right opportunity to come along. His lead role on the TV show Wanted Dead or Alive from 1958 to 1961 helped him get noticed, but back then, making the leap from television to movies was no easy feat. Luckily, The Magnificent Seven hit theaters before his TV run ended, showing audiences he belonged on the big screen. By then, he’d already appeared in six other films, so he wasn’t exactly new to the business. The rest of the 1960s saw him rise even higher, starring in hits like The Great Escape, earning an Oscar nod for The Sand Pebbles, and cementing his reputation with The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt. By the time he starred alongside Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno, he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.
The Movie That Haunted Him
Despite all his success, one film from his past continued to bother him. In his first leading movie role, McQueen starred in 1958’s The Blob. The film, about a mysterious alien substance terrorizing a small town, became a surprise box office smash and a cult classic in the sci-fi genre. But McQueen couldn’t stand it. He disliked the project from the start.
“It was shit!”
he once told Michael Munn. His wife at the time, Neile Adams, encouraged him to take the part.
“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.”
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned.
“Man, everyone saw it,”
he later admitted.
Missed Opportunities and Lingering Regret
Ironically, McQueen could have made a fortune from the film. He was offered 10% of the profits, but he turned it down, convinced the movie would flop. Instead, he took a flat fee of $3,000. The film ended up grossing over $4 million on a budget of just $110,000, so he missed out on a huge payday. Even as his career soared, his feelings about The Blob never changed. In one of his last interviews before his death in 1980, he was asked about the film. His response was blunt:
“I don’t want to talk about that movie.”