n THERE'S only one man who could fight a giant crimson blancmange and still come out of the fray looking cool. The 1958 sci-fi farrago The Blob would surely constitute a wobbly vehicle for any aspiring actor, but Steve McQueen not only survived, the moment he donned a black leather jacket and straddled his motorbike, he became a star. His next major role, as one of the hired guns in The Magnificent Seven, secured his enduring image as laconic loner and super-chilled rebel. Moreover, his clinch with Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair - perhaps the longest kiss in movie

history - confirmed his status as the sixties' sexiest leading man.

n Of course, it wasn't simply that he looked the part, though inspiration for the theme music to The Great Escape hit Elmer Bernstein the moment he saw McQueen lope across the PoW camp: ''It all came from watching Steve: cheek in the face of

danger . . .'' Nor was it simply that he was so perfectly laid-back in his delivery; the

acting was only acting, after all. As the man himself once said: ''In my own mind, I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing''.

n No, what made him an icon for every child and the child in every adult, was his

insistence on doing his own stunts. Thus he claimed the best car chase ever filmed in Bullitt, where he piloted his 400bhp Mustang fastback over the hills of San Francisco, sometimes even touching the ground. And he gave the Nazis a run for their money, almost making it through the wire on two wheels in The Great Escape. Or maybe you remember him best for hanging from a helicopter in The Towering Inferno?

n Born in Slater, Missouri, in 1930, this tough-guy image was no doubt moulded in his youth by a spell in reform school, followed by a stint in the Marines, before a short study period at the Neighbourhood Playhouse and Uta Hagen School in New York. He

married three times, his second wife being actress Ali McGraw, who once noted: ''He

didn't like the women in his life to have balls''. Call me old-fashioned, but you can't

really fault a man for that.

n He lost the longest and hardest fight of his life when cancer brought his great escape in 1980. But even in death he still looks cool - the ad men who rule the world and are now making advances on the afterlife proved in their recent computer-reanimated Puma ads that the Cooler King is still wanted, Dead or Alive.

n Steve McQueen stars in Tom Horn (Channel 5, 9.00pm).