Some choice quotes:

"Professionally, he was usually a nightmare to work with, throwing tantrums about everything from the cut of a pair of jeans to the billing of another actor. On nearly every film that he made, he fell out with the director or the screenwriters or his co-stars — and sometimes all of them at once."

"Desperately insecure, he’d work himself into a fury over the success of his rivals. When he learned that James Garner — who then lived in a flat below his — had beaten him in his ambition to make a movie about motor racing, he urinated every night on to Garner’s balcony."

"Within days, he’d embarked on an intensely sexual affair with the film’s leading lady actress Lita Milan — and then proudly told his wife about it."

"A few seconds later, he returned with a pistol and pointed it at her head, insisting she tell him the name of the actor. When she didn’t answer, he cocked the trigger and pressed the tip of the barrel hard against her temple."

"During an attempted reconciliation, he kicked her and called her a whore....Much to his shock and disbelief, she’d finally had enough."

Of course, the article provides context and much more insight than might be gleaned from these quotes. These are merely appetizers before the main course.

I'm not really a fan of The Daily Fail, they are just a shameless tabloid. There must be an article from a trusted publication that maybe is a bit more balanced? There is no mention of McQueen on her Wiki (or on his) but she is still alive & was married to the son of dictator Trujillo (Dominican Republic). On McQueen's Wiki page there is a blurb about Garner & McQueen being good friends:

"After discovering a mutual interest in racing, McQueen and Great Escape co-star James Garner became good friends and lived near each other. McQueen recalled:

I could see that Jim was neat around his place. Flowers trimmed, no papers in the yard... grass always cut. So to piss him off, I'd start lobbing empty beer cans down the hill into his driveway. He'd have his drive all spick 'n' span when he left the house, then get home to find all these empty cans. Took him a long time to figure out it was me."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_McQueen#Personal_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lita_Milan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramfis_Trujillo

@bratface said:

I'm not really a fan of The Daily Fail, they are just a shameless tabloid. There must be an article from a trusted publication that maybe is a bit more balanced? There is no mention of McQueen on her Wiki (or on his) but she is still alive & was married to the son of dictator Trujillo (Dominican Republic). On McQueen's Wiki page there is a blurb about Garner & McQueen being good friends:

"After discovering a mutual interest in racing, McQueen and Great Escape co-star James Garner became good friends and lived near each other. McQueen recalled:

I could see that Jim was neat around his place. Flowers trimmed, no papers in the yard... grass always cut. So to piss him off, I'd start lobbing empty beer cans down the hill into his driveway. He'd have his drive all spick 'n' span when he left the house, then get home to find all these empty cans. Took him a long time to figure out it was me."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_McQueen#Personal_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lita_Milan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramfis_Trujillo

The article is based on a published book, Steve McQueen: A Biography by Marc Eliot. It's a credible work, but I must admit I have not read it.

Beyond the book, there are also interviews (written and video) with Ali McGraw in which she shares "the horrors" of her marriage to McQueen. So, while The Daily Mail may sensationalize, there's a lot there to be sensationalized - I mean, it's unlikely they just randomly choose McQueen to make up lies about, right?

From my trusty, dusty copy of Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 14th Edition (2001) --

"One thing about Steve, he didn't like the women in his life to have balls" -- Ali McGraw

"When you made a deal with him, his attitude was that what you were really doing was renting his nude, filthy, unshaven body for however long the filming was going to last . . . if you wanted him clothed, you had to buy him clothes. So you would get these bills-- 40 pairs of Levis, 300 sweaters, underwear, socks, shoes, the whole works" -- John Calley

Personally, I haven't seen much of McQueen's work, beyond Pappillon (1973) (and never was able to finish it, simply because of the time constraints of when I caught it, but I have to say, the cinematography was great, and McQueen's acting was clearly top-notch). The nasty stuff I've heard about him, by itself, would not be enough for me not to view his work; if we disregarded every artist-- no matter the medium --based on their personal lives, I think almost all of them would be thrown into the rubbish. It's just that none of his titles ever really caught my interest. But that's just me.

Yikes. I always had a creepy feeling about the guy, based on the fact that nearly all the movies of his I've seen have real animal killing/torture/abuse in them. Sure back then was a different time where they'd trip horses and shoot dogs on camera, but the best actors would staunchly oppose it (like David Carradine who got into an infamous spat with Bergman for butchering a horse on set, refusing to work with him again).

Doesn't surprise me that a guy who doesn't care about horse deaths at his workplace wouldn't care about the women in his private life.