If there had been an award to win for being “cool” in the 60′s, actor Steve Mcqueen would have won it.
In the spring of 1963, actor Steve Mcqueen was on the brink of superstardom, already popular from his big-screen breakout as one of The Magnificent Seven and just a couple of months away from international acclaimed release of The Great Escape.
Intrigued by his dramatic life story and off-screen affairs, LIFE magazine sent photographer John Dominis to California to hang out with the 33 year old actor in his Palm Springs home.
Three weeks and more than 40 rolls of film later, Dominis had captured some astonishingly intimate and now iconic images of Mcqueen & his then wife, Neile Adams (pictures that would be impossible to imagine in today’s restricted access celebrity culture). Dominis followed and photographed Mcqueen through all action moments of his daily life, the pictures resulted lend insight into the life of an icon and reflected both his on-screen and off-screen personae of, anti-hero, non-conformist, rebel, ladies man and of course, the sudden rise of his Hollywood stardom.
These photographs are now showing at the ATLAS GALLERY in london through october and november, 2012.
