#Why Steve McQueen Refused A Role In Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

Newman was the A-list actor when it came to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” but McQueen wasn’t ready to acknowledge that fact when it came down to negotiations. He wanted top billing and the same number of lines, something that prompted Newman to call McQueen a “chicken s***.” Daryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, offered a compromise: half the movie prints would have Newman’s name first on the titles, while the other half would start with McQueen’s.

McQueen wasn’t satisfied with that solution, and walked away. The role went to Robert Redford, making him a major star. He also formed a classic screen partnership with Newman, their easy-going chemistry inspiring decades of buddy comedies and thrillers. They re-teamed with George Roy Hill a few years later for “The Sting,” which won Best Picture at the 1974 Academy Awards.

McQueen’s career stuttered a little after that decision, and he eventually accepted a similar compromise when the two actors finally came together for Irwin Allen’s star-studded disaster movie, “The Towering Inferno.” To accommodate his top billing demands, the credits were arranged diagonally with McQueen’s name in the bottom left-hand corner, and Newman’s in the top right. That way, either actor’s name came first, depending if you read top-to-bottom or left-to-right.

Ultimately, McQueen’s pettiness cost him a role in one of Hollywood’s best-loved movies, and his status today is more of a maverick icon with unsavoury aspects of toxic masculinity rather than a bonafide legend like Newman.