This kind of humility from a big-name actor is relatively rare, at least as far as quoted interviews go. But of course, all successful movie stars know what their wheelhouse is about and that they need to stay within it. That’s how their fans like it also.
Back in his heyday nobody wanted Steve McQueen to play Biff in Death of a Salesman or Jamie Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and they certainly didn’t want to see him in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (’78). They wanted him to be the Bullitt guy, the Great Escape guy, the Sand Pebbles guy.
He was great in the ’60s but in the ’70s McQueen made one huge mistake after another, turning down lead roles in Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now, William Friedkin‘s The French Connection and then Sorcerer, George Roy Hill‘s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Robert Altman‘s California Split, Don Siegel‘s Dirty Harry and Steven Spielberg‘s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Nobody screwed himself out of so many great roles as Steve McQueen.
Which big-name actors today have the same kind of reputation? Not actually McQueen-esque but known for being really good within a particular kind of film and playing a particular mode or color, but with a tendency to suck eggs if they step outside of their safe zone?
