He insisted on doing his own stunts (unless insurance would not let him).
And even that didn't always stop him! Being a very competent racing driver in real life, one of his burning ambitions was to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Of course, he made (and pretty much produced) the movie
Le Mans as a love letter to the greatest race on Earth and had planned on driving one of the actual Porsche 917k that entered the real life 1970 race from which most of the race footage was taken, but his insurers absolutely forbid him from driving in the actual race. Apparently, their demands fell on deaf ears.
When he was making the film, he used his own Porsche 908/2 race car as a camera car to get race speed footage. The car was slower than the other competitors due to the camera mount fitted to the nose of the thing, but it was an official entry for the 1970 race and it did record an official finish time.
Over the years McQueen had many different types and styles of racing helmet, but at the time that Le Mans was being filmed, there were some stills of him during filming breaks in the camera car wearing a quite distinctive bright red Bell racing lid with a white visor strip. In a blink and you'll miss it scene, you see the Porsche 908/2 camera car race past the pits when one of the Gulf Porsche 917k hero cars is in for service about a third of the way through the film. McQueen is off screen at this point...or is he?
It was a strange scene for his character to be absent from, instead focussing on the mechanics at work (the driver is always present during real Le Mans servicing pits, as McQueen would have been fully aware)...and the driver of the camera car (complete with the camera 'bulge' on the nose of the thing) has the very same red/white helmet as it tears past the pit lane in the actual live race. We're talking about a seconds worth of footage, but it's there if you know where and when to look.
It was a trick McQueen often pulled, usually adopting the alias 'Harvey Mushman' after his insurers told him that in no uncertain terms were they ever to see the name 'Steve McQueen' on any entry lists for motocross trails competitions that he enjoyed when he wasn't filming...so he made sure that they never would.
Of course, Le Mans is a much more official set up than a scramble across the desert, so a random, phantom Harvey Mushman who no one had ever heard of would never make it onto the entry list without someone uncovering the truth very quickly indeed. It was never confirmed that it was McQueen driving the camera car in that scene, but it was rumoured that he switched places with one of the official entry list drivers of the camera car just so he could get a few laps in and fulfil a life long ambition in saying that he drove in the real Le Mans race.
And whilst it was never confirmed, it was never denied either.
SEX - Breakfast Of Champions!
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