McQueen was born Terrence Steven McQueen in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburban community bordering Indianapolis, in Marion County. His father, William, a stunt pilot for a barnstorming flying circus, abandoned McQueen and his mother when McQueen was six months old. His mother, Jullian, was a young, rebellious alcoholic. Unable to cope with bringing up a small child, she left him with her parents (Victor and Lillian) in Slater, Missouri, in 1933. Shortly thereafter, as the Great Depression set in, McQueen and his grandparents moved in with Lillian's brother Claude on the latter's farm in Slater.

McQueen had good memories of the time spent on his Great Uncle Claude's farm. In recalling Claude, McQueen stated "He was a very good man, very strong, very fair. I learned a lot from him." On McQueen's fourth birthday, Claude gave him a red tricycle, which McQueen later claimed started his interest in racing. At the age of 8 he was taken back by his mother and lived with her and her new husband in Indianapolis. McQueen retained a special memory of leaving the farm: "The day I left the farm Uncle Claude gave me a personal going-away present: a gold pocket watch, with an inscription inside the case." The inscription said: "To Steve – who has been a son to me".

McQueen, who was dyslexic and partially deaf as a result of a childhood ear infection, did not adjust well to his new life. Within a couple of years he was running with a street gang and committing acts of petty crime. Unable to control his behavior, his mother sent him back to Slater again. A couple of years later, when McQueen was 12, Jullian wrote to Claude asking that McQueen be returned to her once again, to live in her new home in Los Angeles, California. Jullian, whose second marriage had ended in divorce, had married for a third time.

This would begin an unsettled period in McQueen's life. By McQueen's own account, he and his new stepfather "locked horns immediately". As McQueen began to rebel once again, he was sent back to live with Claude a final time. At the age of 14, McQueen left Claude's farm without saying goodbye and joined a circus for a short time, after which he slowly drifted back to his mother and stepfather in Los Angeles and resumed his life as a gang member and petty criminal.

McQueen's stepfather convinced Jullian to sign a court order stating that McQueen was incorrigible and remanding him to the California Junior Boys Republic in Chino Hills, California. Here, McQueen slowly began to change and mature. He became a role model for the other boys when he was elected to the Boys Council, a group who made the rules and regulations governing the boys' lives. After McQueen left Chino, he returned to Jullian, now living in Greenwich Village, but almost immediately left again. He then met two sailors from the Merchant Marine and volunteered to serve on a ship bound for the Dominican Republic. Once there, he abandoned his new post and eventually made his way to Texas, and drifted from job to job.

In 1952, with financial assistance provided by the G.I. Bill, McQueen began studying acting at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse. He also began to earn money by competing in weekend motorcycle races at Long Island City Raceway and soon purchased the first of many motorcycles, a used Harley Davidson. He soon became an excellent racer, and came home each weekend with about $100 in winnings.

After several roles in productions including Peg o' My Heart The Member of the Wedding, and Two Fingers of Pride, McQueen landed his first film role in Somebody Up There Likes Me, directed by Robert Wise and starring Paul Newman He made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play A Hatful of Rain, starring Ben Gazzara. When McQueen appeared in a two-part television presentation titled The Defenders, Hollywood manager Hilly Elkins (who managed McQueen's first wife, Neile) took note of him and decided that B-movies would be a good place for the young actor to make his mark. McQueen was subsequently hired to appear in the films Never Love a Stranger, The Blob, and The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery.

McQueen's first breakout role would not come in film, but on TV. Elkins successfully lobbied Vince Fennelly, producer of the Western series Trackdown, to have McQueen read for the part of a bounty hunter named Josh Randall in a new pilot for a Trackdown companion series. The Josh Randall character, played by Robert Culp, was introduced in an episode of Trackdown, after which McQueen filmed the pilot episode. The pilot was approved for a new series, now titled Wanted: Dead or Alive on CBS in September 1958.

McQueen would ultimately make this role his own and become a household name as a result. Randall's holster held a sawed-off Winchester rifle nicknamed the "Mare's Leg," instead of the standard six-gun carried by the typical Western character. This added to the anti-hero image of a man infused with a mixture of mystery, alienation, and detachment that made this show stand out from the typical TV Western. Ninety four episodes, filmed at Apacheland Studio from 1958 till early 1961, kept McQueen steadily employed in television.

At 29, McQueen got his most significant break when Frank Sinatra removed Sammy Davis, Jr. from the film Never So Few, and Davis's role went to McQueen. Sinatra saw something special in McQueen and ensured that the young actor got plenty of good shots and close-ups in a role that earned McQueen favorable reviews. McQueen's character, Bill Ringa, like the characters he would come to play, brought a new kind of cool to the screen and was never more comfortable than when driving at high speed — in this case at the wheel of a jeep. John Sturges directed this film, and then used McQueen in The Magnificent Seven a year later, and in The Great Escape in 1963.

In 1966, McQueen earned his only Academy Award nomination, for his role in the film The Sand Pebbles. He followed with another successful film, 1968's Bullitt, which featured an unprecedented (and endlessly imitated) auto chase through San Francisco, with Bud Ekins again doubling for some of the more hazardous work. McQueen also appeared in the 1971 car race drama Le Mans, and in The Getaway in 1972. He played the leading role in Junior Bonner in 1972, and in 1973's Papillon.

By the time of The Getaway, McQueen was the world's highest paid actor. After The Towering Inferno, co-starring with his long-time rival Paul Newmanin 1974, McQueen did not return to film until 1978 with An Enemy of the People playing against type as a heavily-bearded, bespectacled doctor, in this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play. The film was little seen. His last films were Tom Horn and The Hunter, both released in 1980.

McQueen died at the age of 50 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, following an operation to remove or reduce a metastatic tumor in his stomach. He had been diagnosed with mesothelioma (a type of cancer associated with asbestos exposure) in December 1979, and had travelled to Mexico in July 1980 for unconventional treatment after his doctors advised him that they could do nothing more to prolong his life. McQueen was cremated, and his ashes spread in the Pacific Ocean. McQueen may have been exposed to asbestos during his service in the United States Marine Corps, or during his racing career.

Posthumously, McQueen remains one of the most popular stars, and his estate limits the licensing of his image to avoid the commercial oversaturation experienced by some other deceased celebrities. McQueen's personality and trademark rights are managed by Corbis Corporation. In 1999, McQueen was posthumously inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.