[Editor’s note: As I write, it’s been about 4.5 years since I first published this piece, having no clue that it would go viral. Needless to say, this is young work, and I’ve written far better since then, but of all my articles this seems to be the one that struck a chord with the most people.

A couple years of reflection and reading the comments people have left inspired me to add this postscript in a comment of my own below, which I’d like to quote here:

“I think a lot of people have understandably found [this piece] because there’s still a lingering sense of hero-worship there for McQueen himself as an actor. Just his name still has a kind of magnetic force for people. But what I learned as I researched this piece, and even more after writing it in flipping through his first wife’s well-written memoirs…