Sir Steve Rodney McQueen (born 9 October 1969) is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter and video artist. He has received several awards including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1999; the BFI Fellowship in 2016; and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 for services to art and film. In 2014, he was included in Time magazine's annual Time 100 list of the "most influential people in the world".
McQueen made his feature-length directorial film debut with the historical drama Hunger (2008), which focused on the 1981 Irish hunger strike, followed by the erotic psychological drama Shame (2011), which explored sex addiction. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture directing the historical drama 12 Years a Slave (2013). He also directed the contemporary crime thriller Widows (2018), and the World War II drama Blitz (2024).
For television, McQueen released Small Axe (2020), a collection of five anthology films "set within London's West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early '80s". He also directed the BBC documentary series Uprising (2021) and the documentary film Occupied City (2023).
Early life and education
McQueen was born in London on 9 October 1969, to a Grenadian father and a Trinidadian mother. The names of these parents were Julia and William, both of whom had migrated to England. .Mains, Asher (11 January 2014), "Steve McQueen: Grenada's Future Creatives", Now Grenada. Retrieved 10 August 2025. He grew up in Ealing, West London. McQueen was a keen football player, turning out for the West London youth football team St. George's Colts.
McQueen attended Drayton Manor High School. In a 2014 interview, he stated that he had a very bad experience in school, where he had been placed into a class for students believed best suited "for manual labour, more plumbers and builders, stuff like that". He said that, 15 years later, when he returned to present some achievement awards, the new head of the school claimed that there had been institutional racism at the time. McQueen added that he was dyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch because of a lazy eye, and reflected this might be why he had been "put to one side very quickly".
McQueen took A-level Art at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. He went on to study Art and Design at Chelsea College of Arts, mainly working in painting. Later, he studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he first became interested in film. Influenced by Jean Vigo, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, and Andy Warhol, McQueen started making short films. He left Goldsmiths and studied briefly at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He found the approach there too stifling and insufficiently experimental, complaining that "they wouldn't let you throw the camera up in the air".
McQueen's artistic influences include Andy Warhol, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Vigo, Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, and Billy Wilder.
Career 1990–2007: Short films and visual art
McQueen's films as an artist were typically projected onto one or more walls of an enclosed space in an art gallery, and often in black-and-white and minimalistic. He has cited the influence of the nouvelle vague and the films of Andy Warhol. He often appeared in the films himself.
In 1995, McQueen met the art curator Okwui Enwezor at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Enwezor became a mentor to him as well as a friend and had a significant influence on McQueen's work.
McQueen's first major work was Bear (1993), in which two naked men (one of them McQueen) exchange a series of glances that might be taken to be flirtatious or threatening. Another early work, Deadpan (1997) is a restaging of a Buster Keaton stunt in which a house collapses around McQueen, who is left unscathed because he is standing where there is a missing window. As well as being in black-and-white, both these films are silent.
The first of McQueen's films to use sound was also the first to use multiple images: Drumroll (1998). This was made with three cameras, two mounted to the sides, and one to the front of an oil drum, which McQueen rolled through the streets of Manhattan. The resulting films were projected on three walls of an enclosed space.
During this time, McQueen also made sculptures such as White Elephant (1998), as well as photographs.
In 1999, McQueen won the Turner Prize for the "range" and "emotional intensity" of his art. However, much of the publicity went to Tracey Emin, who was also a nominee.
In 2006, McQueen went to Iraq as an official war artist commissioned by the Imperial War Museum. The following year, he presented the work Queen and Country (2007), which commemorated the British soldiers killed in the Iraq War by presenting their portraits as sheets of stamps. A proposal to have the stamps placed in circulation was rejected by the Royal Mail.
His 2007, McQueen's short film Gravesend depicted the process of coltan refinement and production. It premiered at The Renaissance Society in the United States.
2008–2018: Breakthrough as filmmaker
Hunger (2008)
In 2008, McQueen's first feature-length film Hunger, about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. McQueen won the Caméra d'Or (first-time director) Award at Cannes, the first British director to win the award. The film also won several awards including:
The inaugural Sydney Film Festival Prize for "its controlled clarity of vision, its extraordinary detail and bravery, the dedication of its cast and the power and resonance of its humanity".
The 2008 Diesel Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is voted on by the press attending the festival. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for a New Generation film in 2008. The best film prize at the London Evening Standard Film Awards in 2009.
Venice Biennale 2009
McQueen represented Britain at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Also in 2009, it was announced that McQueen had been tapped to direct Fela, a biopic about the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti;Fleming, Michael, and Ali Jaafar (7 December 2009), "Focus to film 'Fela' feature", Variety.Child, Ben (8 December 2009), "Steve McQueen to Direct Fela Kuti Biopic", The Guardian. however, by 2014, the proposal was no longer produced under Focus Features, and while he maintained his role as the main writer, McQueen was replaced by Andrew Dosunmu as the director. McQueen told The Hollywood Reporter that the film was "dead".
Shame (2011)
In 2011, McQueen's second major theatrical film Shame was released. Set in New York City, it stars Michael Fassbender as a sex addict whose life is suddenly turned upside-down when his estranged sister (Carey Mulligan) reappears.
The film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was shown at the New York Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival.
The film received critical acclaim, with Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times giving the film four out of four stars and describing it as "a powerful film" and "courageous and truthful", commenting that "this is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice." Ebert would later name it his second best film of 2011. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, stating: "Driven by a brilliant, ferocious performance by Michael Fassbender, Shame is a real walk on the wild side, a scorching look at a case of sexual addiction that's as all-encompassing as a craving for drugs."
12 Years of Slave (2013)
McQueen's next film was 12 Years a Slave (2013). Based on the 1853 autobiography of the same name by Solomon Northup, the film tells the story of a free black man who is kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery, working on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before being released. On the process of making 12 Years a Slave, actor and producer Brad Pitt stated: "Steve was the first to ask the big question, 'Why has there not been more films on the American history of slavery?'. And it was the big question it took a Brit to ask."
The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in March 2014, becoming the first Best Picture winner to have a black director or producer. The film also won a supporting actress Oscar for Lupita Nyong'o.
2012–2018
In 2012, McQueen debuted a new artistic installation End Credits, which focused on the political persecution of Paul Robeson, with more than 10 hours each of video footage and audio recordings, unsynced. It has been exhibited at a number of locations including the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Perez Art Museum (Miami), and International Performing Arts festival in Amsterdam (June 2019).
In 2013, McQueen signed on to develop Codes of Conduct, a six-episode limited series for HBO. However, after the pilot episode was shot, HBO shut down production. He also worked on a BBC drama about the lives of black Britons, which follows a group of friends and their families from 1968 to 2014.
In 2014, McQueen announced plans to do a feature film on Robeson with Harry Belafonte.
In 2015, McQueen shot the video for Kanye West's single "All Day".Frydenlund, Zach (2 March 2015), "Kanye West Spoke at Oxford University Earlier Today", Complex. The film was screened at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris on 7 March 2015 before the first concert of a four-night residency by the American artist, at the Frank Gehry-designed building, began.Nostro, Lauren (7 March 2015), "Kanye West Premieres Steve McQueen-Directed "All Day" Video in Paris", Complex. The film subsequently received its American premiere at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in July 2015.
In 2018, McQueen directed Widows, which was co-written with Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn and based on the 1983 British series of the same name. Viola Davis starred in the heist thriller about four armed robbers who are killed in a failed heist attempt, only to have their widows step up to finish the job. He also directed a one-minute commercial for Chanel's men fragrance Bleu de Chanel starring Gaspard Ulliel.
2019–present
Year 3 (2019) In 2019, McQueen created the photographic project Year 3. It displayed class portraits of almost every London schoolchild in Year 3 (more than 3000 images) at Tate Britain in London. The photographs were also displayed on billboards across the city. McQueen said he did this project to show people "how uneven the playing field already is...you can see the disparities in resources, opportunities and circumstances that will shape these young lives" and in doing so, showing them "the future of London".
Small Axe (2020)
In 2019, it was announced that Small Axe, an anthology series of five films created and directed by McQueen, would be released on BBC One and Amazon Prime Video. Some form of the series had been in development since 2012, and was first announced in 2014. The series focuses on "five stories set within London's West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early '80s". The series was released weekly on BBC One and Amazon Prime Video starting in November 2020.
The anthology was a particularly personal project for McQueen, as it portrays the larger community that he grew up in. They are films he felt should have been made "35 years ago, 25 years ago, but they weren't".
To close the Anthology, McQueen chose to base the final film, Education, on a story from his own life.
Three films in the series premiered at the New York Film Festival, receiving critical acclaim. Both Mangrove and Lovers Rock were selected for Cannes in 2020, and had the festival not been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McQueen would have been the first director to have two films in competition in Cannes in the same year.