PHOTOS BY WILLIAM CLAXTON

Today would have been iconic actor Steve McQueen's 80th birthday. In March 1999, as The Thomas Crown Affair was being remade, Interview published a series of reflections on his influence by Ben Affleck, John Bartlett, James Coburn, Mark Wahlberg, Andrew Sarris, Gene Simmons, Alec Baldwin, along with some previously unseen photographs by friend and artist William Claxton. Baldwin and Claxton's contributions are reproduced below:

ALEC BALDWIN: There are only a handful of leading men in big movies who I really believe are smart when I see them onscreen. They are successful more because of their brains than anything else. Watching McQueen, I think the actor is smart as opposed to acting smart. Paul Newman and Jim Garner are two other good examples of this. McQueen was tough, certainly, but that’s not what he relied on. He could fall back on it, but he relied primarily on his brains. I see a lot of other actors who do an impersonation of that, but McQueen was the real thing…As far as people accusing him of being a stone face or of not acting, I’ll tell you, you have to get the bad acting out of the way to get to the good acting. He realized that a lot of shit wasn’t necessary. A lot of actors are very animated and then they create that expectation of the audience—and then they get tired of it. The goal is economizing, and McQueen understood that. The actor almost has to get out of the way. Don’t do too much in movies, unless that’s your signature. That "take it or leave it" attitude he was is so compelling. How many guys have made a career in the last thirty years of just looking into the camera and saying, "This is who I am and if you don’t like it then you can just go fuck yourself. And if you fire me tomorrow, fuck you?"

WILLIAM CLAXTON: He was difficult to many people because he was very embarrassed that he had no education and could barely read or write—although he was really very intelligent. H is wife read his scripts to him. We were on one of our trips, and he wanted to send a postcard to somebody and could hardly spell any of the words, and my wife started kidding him about it because she really didn’t believe it…He took very good care of his car collection; he kept it spotless. But rental cars? I remember on location just outside of New Orleans, Ford gave the movie company a group of cars to use for publicity. Steve had a new Ford convertible. He’d say, "Hey, Clax, I’ve got the afternoon off, let’s go." And we went and smoked some dope and then drove way out in the country, and once he saw a clear road, he just floored it until it started heating up. I said, "Steve, I smell the car." And he said, "Yeah, I know, don’t worry about it." We were probably going over 100. Finally the smoke started coming out from under the floorboards. It got really hot and I said, "Steve, this motor’s on fire." He slowed down and said, "OK, now get ready because we’re going to jump out." He slowed down to almost a stop. I jumped and then he jumped. Of course the car burned right down to the ground, while he just sat laughing. The headline in the local paper the next day was STEVE MCQUEEN ESCAPES DEATH AS CAR BURNS. We’d get stopped by state troopers and he’d kind of flirt with them, and they’d just melt and say, "OK, Mr. McQueen, don’t drive so fast." He knew how far he could push his luck. And which way he had to play it. He was so possessive of his men friends. I didn’t quite know which way he really wanted to go.