Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen's strongest quality was looking, listening and reacting; with those ice-cold eyes and that tight smile there was always something slightly frightening about him. In The Great Escape he played Captain Virgil Hilts, nicknamed the cooler king because his escape attempts kept landing him in solitary. The film's best-known scene, Hilts stealing a motorcycle at a checkpoint and jumping the barbed wire, was added later to enlarge the part and let him show his skill, and the jump was done by his stunt double Bud Ekins. In Bullitt he played Frank Bullitt and was voted star of the year by the association of cinema exhibitors for it; his own company Solar Productions made the film.