Steve McQueen. Let’s face it, the guy’s nickname was “The King of Cool”. You will never be Steve McQueen.

But lets put aside his acting for a little bit. Steve McQueen grew up committing acts of petty crime whilst involved in various gangs. He was abandoned by his father, who was a stunt pilot for a circus, when he was just six months old. McQueen eventually ended up in a juvenile reform program in Chino, California. His childhood wasn’t pretty.

In reform school, he started to mature, and was elected to a leadership position on a council within the school. After his stint in reform school, he went tackled various jobs such as a janitor in a brothel, an oil rigger, a trinket salesman in a carnival, and a lumberjack.

Then he joined the military where he saved 5 men from a sinking tank, and guarded then President Harry Truman’s yacht. Then he moved to New York and started racing motorcycles. And winning. No bullshit.

But why am I telling you all this? What does his background have to do with anything and why does it make him cool?

Well, if you’ll shut up and listen, I’m about to get to that part.

After catching the acting bug, McQueens first breakout role before eventually going on to become the highest paid actor of his time was in a movie called Never So Few alonside Frank Sinatra. McQueen ended up taking home most of the critical praise from the movie and I quote from his biography, “McQueen’s character, Bill Ringa, was never more comfortable than when driving at high speed—in this case at the wheel of a jeep—or handling a switchblade or a tommy-gun.”

Switchblades? High speeds? Tommy guns? These things ring any bells with McQueen’s background? The point I’m trying to make is, if you’re willing to set aside all the Hollywood beauty pageant bullshit for a moment, maybe the reason McQueen became such a sought after character was because he was able to, thanks to his own real-life experience, pull off incredibly genuine performances.

And that’s big when it comes to cool. Being genuine. Not faking it. This is why you’ll never see George Clooney on here. If you do a little research, you’ll find that George Clooney’s early life is pretty vanilla when you compare it to McQueens. Son of a beauty pageant queen and an anchorman/game show host, George Clooney was born into show business. Born to fake it. Hell. Even I’ll admit it, George Clooney looks good in a lot of movies, and he manages to pull off that smoothness and ease which seem to be characteristic of ‘cool’.

But he ain’t no Steve McQueen. He ain’t cool.