Steve McQueen (I)

Born in the British capital, on October 19, 1969. Steven Rodney McQueen was a prominent footballer as a child. He assures that at school they discriminated against him because of the color of his skin, because they unfairly sent him to the class of clumsy and repeaters, where he was teased by his classmates. The director of the center recognized years later that “institutional racism” existed.

He studied Art at Hammersmith & West London College and later studied Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, where he began to be interested in audiovisuals, after discovering the work of authors as diverse as Andy Warhol , Dziga Vertov , or Jean Vigo , and the directors of the New Wave.

He began his journey in the field of video art, creating short films that were projected on the walls of art galleries. Steve McQueen’s first notable work was Bear , from 1993, filmed in black and white, in 16 millimeters, which featured two black men, one of them the author himself, with gestures denoting attraction between them, or on the contrary desires. to physically assault the other.

He made his film debut with Hunger , where Steve McQueen already made it clear that he was destined to carve out a place for himself among first-rate directors. It addressed the hunger strike carried out by the republican prisoner Bobby Sands, an IRA terrorist, in Northern Ireland, in 1981. He already had his fetish actor, Michael Fassbender , who surprised with a first-rate performance, especially in a sequence of 17 minutes with a priest ( Liam Cunningham ) who tries to reason with him to make him reconsider his attitude.

Since then, McQueen and Fassbender have become thick and thin. “He is a very direct actor. He asks me and I answer. But we don’t talk, we prefer to do things, because if you talk too much you end up doing nothing”, commented the director. “I did two auditions for Hunger and then we went around getting drunk. I came to the conclusion that he was the ideal actor.”

He reprized with the German actor of Irish origin in Shame , the story of a sex addict. Once again, the director displayed extreme realism in uncomfortable sequences to show the bottomless spiral into which the protagonist has fallen. For his work, Fassbender won the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival and an Oscar nomination. “The protagonist is handsome, he has money and a good job, and yet he builds his own prison through his relationship with sex, a prison without bars,” said the filmmaker.

From sex slavery to the chains of African-Americans in 12 Years a Slave , based on the autobiographical book by Salomon Northup , a northern freeman who was tricked and sold to a southern plantation. The project is endorsed by Brad Pitt , as a producer – he also plays a small role. Of course, Fassbender continues to have enormous importance, although this time he is relegated to a secondary role, the sadistic master of the protagonist, who is embodied by Chiwetel Ejiofor .

The director succeeds in adopting a more classic and conventional style, without great visual risks, unnecessary when it comes to making an impact with sequences as harsh as the hanging of the protagonist. But he justifies the harshness of his tape very well. “People prefer not to know, they prefer not to look at such a horrific episode in their own history, they are willing to ignore it, because it is an uncomfortable truth,” he said. ” Django Unchained played the theme but only from the edges, in a comedy key. I didn’t see this as a game, I wanted to face this reality.”

The film has won the Golden Globe for dramatic film, the BAFTA in the highest category, and 9 Oscar nominations, including the one for best production.

The Englishman is fed up with being asked in interviews why he hasn’t changed his name, to distinguish himself from the famous actor. “Why not”, is the maximum that he manages to answer. He lives in London and Amsterdam with his longtime partner, cultural critic Bianca Stigter, with whom he has two children.