Ali MacGraw has never quite gotten over Steve McQueen, says Sheila Weller in Vanity Fair. “It sounds so corny,” she says, but she fell for him the moment she met him in 1971. “Those eyes—the most extraordinary blue. I was just electrified. It’s very visceral. The brain isn’t involved in that moment.” The two began an affair while shooting The Getaway and, after MacGraw’s divorce from producer Robert Evans, were married in 1973. From the beginning, they fought. “He was a combination of incredible darkness and anger and mystery and almost child-like vulnerability. His mood swings were incredible.” Possessive and paranoid, McQueen convinced himself that MacGraw was being unfaithful. To get even, he had multiple affairs. After years of infidelity and emotional abuse, MacGraw and McQueen were divorced, in 1978. Today, at 71, she realizes she was partly to blame: Insecurity, she says, made her “trim and cover” her feelings. “I did the sullen holdback. I was tight. Inauthentic. Because he was the most desirable man on the planet, I would think, I can’t possibly be desirable enough for this creature—every woman in the restaurant is looking at him!”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Why the weather keeps getting 'stuck'In the Spotlight Record hot and dry spring caused by 'blocked' area of high pressure above the UK
-
Can Starmer sell himself as the 'tough on immigration' PM?Today's Big Question Former human rights lawyer 'now needs to own the change – not just mouth the slogans' to win over a sceptical public
-
UK-India trade deal: how the social security arrangements will workThe Explainer A National Insurance exemption in the UK-India trade deal is causing concern but should British workers worry?
