Credit: Far Out / United Artists
Fri 9 October 2026 22:30, UK
Most movie stars have incredibly fragile egos, and despite his moniker being the ‘King of Cool’, Steve McQueen repeatedly showed throughout his career that his was as brittle as they came.
He did everything in his power to upstage and steal the spotlight away from Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven, and it worked, since the classic western elevated him toward the A-list, but even his co-stars thought he was pulling several dick moves to try and heist the top-billed star’s thunder.
Once he finally settled into his groove as one of Hollywood’s biggest names, McQueen would do anything to defend his position. He wouldn’t dream of sharing the screen with anyone who could make him look like a lesser presence, and he sure as shit wouldn’t go anywhere but first in the credits.
In the grand scheme of things, do audiences really give a shit whose name appears onscreen first? You’d have to say no. The Great Escape headliner cared about more than most things in the world, though, and when he was presented with a sure-fire, guaranteed hit that would quickly ascend to classic status, the mere thought of ‘Steve McQueen’ not taking priority in posters, trailers, and the picture was horrific.
He would have fought that battle anyway, since he had that size of ego, but when he was asked to cede top billing to his arch-nemesis, Paul Newman, of all people, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Bullitt icon made it perfectly clear that either he went first or he wanted nothing to do with it.
“It was a dream,” McQueen’s agent, Freddie Fields, recalled. “What more would you want than Newman and McQueen? McQueen wanted the part, but there was a billing problem. Steve was shooting The Sand Pebbles over at the Fox lot, and he invited me to his trailer to talk. It ended with him saying, ‘I know you mean well, but I can’t.’”
Fields, who was proven right in the end, insisted that “it’s gonna be the hottest picture of the year,” but, again, there was one major non-negotiable. “Yeah,” McQueen replied. “But I can’t take second billing behind Newman.” He could, and it would be the easiest thing in the world, but being the kind of man that he was, he simply couldn’t wrap his head around not being the focal point.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
To try and find a solution, Fields went to Newman, and to nobody’s surprise, since he’d already been promised top billing, he wouldn’t budge, either. “I talked to Newman and said, ‘We’re going to lose McQueen on billing,” the agent pleaded. “He wants first star billing; what do you want to do?”
Obviously, Newman said no, he handpicked Robert Redford for the role instead, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did make a lot of money and won a lot of awards, turned the latter half of the title duo into a household name, and inspired his film festival, and when he crossed paths with Newman again on The Towering Inferno, the billing debate ignited once again into a war of attrition and petty dick-measuring.
