Distance makes no difference with love — The complete Teri McQueen interview

Steve McQueen, clad in buckskin from nearly head to toe, eats peaches outside a general store and learns how to read as titular cowboy “Nevada Smith,” ultimately released on June 10, 1966. Image Credit: Paramount Pictures

Teri McQueen kept an extraordinary secret for nearly 70 years. That is, until best-selling author Marshall Terrill, in the midst of researching the exhaustive Steve McQueen: The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon, his fifth book devoted to the late cultural phenomenon, came upon the military records of William Terrence McQueen, the restless merchant mariner who abandoned his son, the King of Cool, for the allure of the Seven Seas.

Terrill was flabbergasted when he realized that the elder McQueen had listed a second dependent. The news was especially noteworthy considering that the King of Cool, along with all existing biographies, had insisted that he had no siblings. A private investigator was tasked with locating William’s heretofore unconfirmed daughter with second wife Alma Doris Moody.

Ten years younger than Steve, living anonymously in Missouri, and feeling that no one would believe her if she stepped forward, Teri possessed correspondence from her late father, including a Western Union telegram wishing her a happy birthday. Terrill ultimately verified the humble, down-to-earth lady’s identity, and an exciting chapter of her life emerged.

Father and daughter only intersected a handful of times while the latter was still an infant. Ironically, at one time…