McQueen didn’t want to be billed 2nd to Newman, says new book

London: Steve McQueen was a moody, drug-abusing wife beater, who was jealous of his big screen rival Paul Newman, a new biography has claimed.

Marc Eliot’s new book has revealed that the Hollywood legend turned down Robert Redford’s iconic role in the western blockbuster ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ because he did not want a second billing to Newman. McQueen demanded the exact same number of lines as Newman in ‘The Towering Inferno’ and argued over top billing for the 1974 disaster epic. Eliot said that the actor, who died of cancer at 50 in 1980, was troublesome on set and lived a turbulent, drug-fuelled private life. “He did not have it in him to stay faithful and had numerous affairs with his leading ladies,” the daily Express quoted the author as saying. ANI