McQueen had an undeniably troubled childhood. His father abandoned his mother shortly after meeting her, and she spent the following years drifting from husband to husband. After spending his formative years living with his grandparents, the future superstar then returned home, only to be badly beaten by his latest step-father. A rebel from a young age, McQueen left home to live on the streets, resorting to acts of petty crime to get by. He ran into trouble with the Police after being caught stealing hubcaps at the age of 14, and later found himself in a very tight spot when sitting next to a dying, fleeing bank robber as a getaway driver. But it was a run-in with a shopkeeper that really opened his eyes to the trouble he was causing. Unarmed, he entered a service station with his hand shoved in his pocket to look like a gun, then demanded that all the money from the cash register be handed over. "Next thing," he later recalled, "he was reaching for a shotgun. I never ran so fast."
