The 1970s were a trailblazing time when filmmakers threw out all the rules–but one tenet that never changed was the one where two red-hot, sexy stars fall for each other while acting out their passions in front of the camera. Thus when Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw united on the set of director Sam Peckinpah‘s gritty thriller The Getaway in 1972, it was inevitable that serious sparks were about to fly.
At the time the biggest and hottest was the King of Cool, McQueen–not a old-fashioned movie star pretty boy and yet not part of the more nebbishy new wave of Dustin Hoffman and Woody Allen types, either. One of the first TV stars to successfully graduate into major movie stardom, the rugged, taciturn McQueen was both a man’s man and a ladies’ man who earned his reputation as an action star but proved he could also slip effortlessly into roles that required serious acting–he was a graduate of both reform school and the Strasberg school, after all. At age 42, he was arguably Hollywood’s highest paid and most popular star.
Meanwhile, MacGraw, 34, was a relative newcomer with only one major role to her credit–but what a role it was. The 1970 film Love Story was a full-blown phenomenon, rocketing the raven-haired young actress, who plays a dying college student whose illness tragically mars her sweet romance with Ryan O’Neal, into both fame and an Oscar nomination as best actress. She also became the wife of the charismatic former actor and Paramount Pictures head Robert Evans, then one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Considered one of New Hollywood’s most raving beauties, MacGraw was a superstar straight out of the gates.
So is it any wonder that after working out the sweaty, sexy scenes of The Getaway, both stars quickly discovered that they didn’t want to get away from each other? They did, however, make a getaway from their respective spouses–McQueen escaped a 15-year marriage to marry MacGraw, and she abandoned both her marriage to Evans and her flourishing career to devote as much time as possible to the union with McQueen.
Unfortunately, their time was up after only five years. MacGraw later revealed that during the marriage she was plagued by serious personal demons, while McQueen completely gave himself over to his devils: he nearly quit acting altogether and delved deeper and deeper into a dark and dangerous Hollywood scene filled with drink, drugs and womanizing. Physically, he became almost unrecognizable, with long hair, an unkempt beard and a wild look in his eyes. By 1978 Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen no longer looked or acted like who they had once been, to either each other or their many fans–and divorce was the only getaway.
Only two years later, after cleaning up and returning to films, McQueen was dead–the victim of a heart attack after an operation for lung cancer. Although The Getaway started their own personal Love Story, the real McQueen-MacGraw affair was a much darker, sexier, tale.
