His antihero persona, emphasized during the height of the counterculture of the s , made him a top box-office draw for his films of the late 50s to the mid s. He was nicknamed the " King of Cool " and used the alias Harvey Mushman in motor races. In , McQueen became the highest-paid movie star in the world, although he did not act in film for another four years. He was combative with directors and producers, but his popularity placed him in high demand and enabled him to command the largest salaries.
As the Great Depression worsened, McQueen and his grandparents moved in with Lillian's brother Claude and his family at their farm in Slater.
Claude gave McQueen a red tricycle on his fourth birthday, a gift that McQueen subsequently credited with sparking his early interest in car racing. His great-uncle Claude gave McQueen a special gift at his departure. Dyslexic and partially deaf due to a childhood ear infection, [ 7 ] McQueen did not adjust well to school or his new life. His stepfather beat him to such an extent that at the age of nine, he left home to live on the streets.
My mother didn't love me, and I didn't have a father. I thought, 'Well, I must not be very good. When McQueen was 12, Julia wrote to her uncle Claude, asking that her son be returned to her again to live in Los Angeles, where she lived with her second husband. By McQueen's own account, he and his new stepfather "locked horns immediately". He threw the youth down a flight of stairs. McQueen looked up at his stepfather and said, "You lay your stinking hands on me again and I swear, I'll kill you.
After this incident, McQueen's stepfather persuaded his mother to sign a court order stating that McQueen was incorrigible, remanding him to the California Junior Boys Republic in Chino. He was not popular with the other boys at first:. Say the boys had a chance once a month to load into a bus and go into town to see a movie. And they lost out because one guy in the bungalow didn't get his work done right. Well, you can pretty well guess they're gonna have something to say about that.
