For years the studios sent him razors and blue jeans by the crate, because his contracts demanded it, and for years nobody could work out why. The answer was a reform school in California, and the man he had been before anybody called him the King of Cool.
This is the story of a boy who decided very early that he was not worth loving, and then spent thirty years proving it wrong at two hundred kilometres an hour.
The marriage he wrecked, the role he lost over a name on a poster, the film that nearly ended him, and the three words he finally said when it was already too late.
Tonight, the real story of Steve McQueen.