Who is today's Steve McQueen?

[Feraud]

lol that is right!

Personally I think Michael Caine and Lee Marvin have McQueen beat in the cool dept.

 

[ButteMT61]

Marvin, yes. Eastwood, yes. Coburn, yes. Caine, great actor, not really in the "cool" lot. Not for me.
But I'm just unzippin' on ya lol

 

[Feraud]

eesh, and I thought it was raining..

 

[Flicka]

What floored me is: Christian Bale was the kid in the movie 'Empire of the Sun'..!!

As a child, he was also in British-Swedish-Russian co-production My Son Mio. It's a crap movie but based on one of my favourite books (by Astrid Lindgren who wrote Pippi Longstocking). Little known trivia one can dazzle one's friends with!

 

[scottyrocks]

lol that is right!

Personally I think Michael Caine and Lee Marvin have McQueen beat in the cool dept.

I never liked Marvin and never thought he was 'cool,' though. More on the side of obnoxious, imho.

Caine has a certain amount of elegant cool, though.

 

[scottyrocks]

Jesse James? Hell no. The guy treated Sandra Bullock like **** as well as his employees. Nothing about that guy do I idolize. Maybe the bikes. Nothing more. Treating women well is paramount to being a true manly man. No wiggle room in that one. * Of course this counts as we only know so much about anyone. I may have idolized someone(s) that were as bad or worse without knowing. Can't help that!

Well, we all have our downsides, that's for sure.

Like anyone else in the public eye, personas change. The current Jesse James is different from the Jesse James I first saw in his original TV feature, Motorcycle Mania, in 2000. Fame, and all the personality changes that come with it, hadn't yet taken hold. That Jesse James is the one I remember best as the 'cool' Jesse James.

Attempting to compare people from different eras is difficult because a) people are different to begin with, and b) of the differing mores of the eras in which they live(d). I'm gonna pluck the Jesse James from 2000 as the one to compare, in any way, shape or form, to McQueen, win, lose or draw, for whatever it's worth, which quite frankly is nothing.

 

[dhermann1]

OK, I've let this discussion go on long enough. Let me make it perfectly clear, and abundantly lacking in confusion. I . . . am today's Steve McQueen.
Got that, people???

I am also, by the way, today's Gene Kelly:

 

[HoosierDaddy]

OK, I've let this discussion go on long enough. Let me make it perfectly clear, and abundantly lacking in confusion. I . . . am today's Steve McQueen.
Got that, people???

I am also, by the way, today's Gene Kelly:

My gawd man...well done..!!
I bet you could even handle one of my all time favorite skits.........

[video=youtube;54iR0xFkEfQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54iR0xFkEfQ[/video]

 

[Fletch]

[McQueen] also had a sense of humor and didn't take himself to seriously.

This might have been a founding influence on cool, but it has died out of our modern concept.

The archetypical cool man (and let's face it, cool is about 98% masculinity) laughs at nothing but pain - his own or others'. And he may not take himself seriously, but he stops well short of showing it.

Cool and real are always at swords' points. Artifice is fatal; façade is crucial.

Maybe no one is really cool today. Because maybe what we demand of cool today is a caricature, an exaggeration that would lull us into thinking it wasn't one. We may have refined cool into a self-contradiction - a dime-store Platonic ideal of hollow authenticity that no one alive could satisfy.

 

[ButteMT61]

I dunno, dherrman1 may have changed minds with those pics lol
Well played sir.

 

[Fletch]

Danny is beyond cool. He makes child's play of cool.

 

[Tomasso]

Maybe no one is really cool today.

Actors were never cool in real life. At least not anywhere close to their public persona, which back in the day was meticulously constructed and carefuly guarded. IRL, McQueen was a lot closer to Tom Cruise than his public image.

 

[Mark B.]

That's a scary thought....Tom Cruise is hard to watch doing interviews on talk shows..he gives me an uncomfortable, awkward to watch feeling.. My image of Steve McQueen would be destroyed if his personality was similar to Tom Cruise.. Say it ain't so A.C.!!

Actors were never cool in real life. At least not anywhere close to their public persona, which back in the day was meticulously constructed and carefuly guarded. IRL, McQueen was a lot closer to Tom Cruise than his public image.

 

[SHOWSOMECLASS]

Actors were never cool in real life. At least not anywhere close to their public persona, which back in the day was meticulously constructed and carefuly guarded. IRL, McQueen was a lot closer to Tom Cruise than his public image.

Good point A.C. Rock Hudson movie star vs. Rock Hudson real life.

 

[Stearmen]

My pants are zipped, so whom do you refer to here?

Don't lie Butte, you haven't closed the barn door in years! Oh, got to go, darn zippers, why are they so complicated!

 

[1961MJS]

Good point A.C. Rock Hudson movie star vs. Rock Hudson real life.

Hi

It does seem that Rock Hudson was one heck of an actor.

Later

 

[Classydame]

I always thought Anthony Michael Hall, circa Dead Zone period, (sorry, I can't seem to post an image) looked a lot like Steve McQueen. But as for the "coolness" factor, as stated by others in this thread, the contemporary idea of cool has changed and I don't think there is anybody currently with the McQueen cool. However, some modern actors that I dub cool are Vince Vaughn, Gabriel Macht and of course our own DHermann. Also, the one thing I like about McQueen was that he was unapologetically male.

 

[Feraud]

Willie Nelson- very cool!

 

[sinatra66]

"You drive just like Steve Mc queen" ... cool on screen and off. No actors or singers today compare to there counter parts of days gone by. There close but not as good as the original.

Tom Hanks new Jimmy Stewart
Mike buble/Harry Connick jr. new Sinatra/Martin
Wayne Brady new Sammy Davis jr. ect.

In think all the new big talent are great and come close. Just not Icon great. Apples and oranges.

what i can't understand is how people becom famous for nothing? Kim Cardashin, Jersy shore cast, list goes on.

 

[kamikat]

My vote for today's McQueen is Jason Statham. I really like Vinnie Jones, too, but he might be too thugish to qualify.