'He was the most private person I've ever known and there wasn't that phoniness of "oooh-let-me-pretend-to-be-private-but-let's-go-out-and-be-seen". 'The time I spent with him was a complicated period a lot of it wonderful, some not so wonderful, and I wouldn't have wanted to have missed it for anything.' After half a dozen years together they divorced after she went back to work -- for Sam Peckinpah -- co-starring with Kris Kristofferson in 'Convoy' in 1978. McQueen lived with model Barbara Minty and, before his death on November 7, 1980 , they married. MacGraw heard that he had terminal cancer from a friend. She wrote her former husband notes of comfort but got and did not expect replies. 'The news was Olympian in its devastation.I cried hysterically through the night. It still is today. It stays with me. Steve had an inordinate sense of truth and morality and honour. And that was a major attraction for me for it really stands out in the Hollywood community. 'After all these years of having the world bow at his feet, he had a fabulous grasp of what was real and what wasn't. 'His death stays with me because it's very difficult when you feel you didn't tie off the communication properly. It remains unfinished business.' Even more so now with the return to television of Steve McQueen -- as the star of the Ford Puma ads. British director Peter Yates filmed the the famous 'Bullitt' car chase over three weeks. The TV commercial took six days of work by a crew of fifty using the same San Francisco locations as those drive by Detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt in 1968. Brian Wade of Ford said: ' I spoke to Bill Fraker the cameraman who lighted the original film.I talked to him about the kind of lenses they were using and the way they were shooting it and I imported a lot of those ideas.' The fears were not about McQueen's impact -- it has been sensational -- but that his digitally manoeuvred images would not look wrong when mixed with the fresh film of the Puma. The tone had to 'fit'. In London studios a post-production team worked with the McQueen images from 'Bullitt' and overlaid them on the new film -- and the McQueen stand-in. A scene of McQueen leaving a yellow cab in the original film was cleverly manipulated to be him stepping out of the Puma, registration JJZ 109 -- the same as McQueen's car in 'Bullitt'. As the 1997 film ends he pats the car and flashes that 'gritty integrity' smile. His 'appearance' was negotiated with Warner Brothers who own the film rights and McQueen's estate whose beneficiaries are Chad and Neile McQueen. 'The fee we paid was not vastly different from what you would pay for a leading figure today', said Paul Venn of the Young and Rubicam advertising agency. McQueen would have approved. No longer King of Hollywood. Even better though -- King of the Road.
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