Steve McQueen

Terrence Stephen McQueen was born March 24, 1930, and by the late 1950s had carved a niche playing men who didn't explain themselves. The Blob in 1958 gave way to The Magnificent Seven in 1960 and The Great Escape in 1963, the latter earning him a Moscow International Film Festival Award. The Sand Pebbles in 1966 brought an Academy Award nomination; Bullitt in 1968 and The Getaway in 1972 cemented the archetype. He became the world's highest-paid actor in 1974 after The Towering Inferno, then vanished from screens for four years - combative with directors, unbending in his terms. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he flew to Mexico in October 1980 for surgery U.S. doctors had refused to attempt. He checked into a Ciudad Juárez hospital under a fake name, went under the knife, and died of a heart attack hours later on November 7, 1980.