Yul Brynner Truly Hated Him More Than Anyone…Try not to Gasp | DNA

Yul Brynner truly hated him more than anyone. Try not to gasp. It was October 10th, 1985, at a New York hospital, when Yul Brynner died at the age of 65 from lung cancer. The exotic and enigmatic star, known for his completely bald head and his unforgettable portrayal of the King of Siam, was gone.

But before he died, Brynner did something no other Hollywood star had ever dared to do. In January 1985, knowing he had only months to live, he filmed a public service announcement about the dangers of smoking. The commercial was starkly simple; there was no costume, no makeup, and absolutely no performance.

It was just Yul Brynner sitting in a chair, looking directly into the camera lens. “Now that I’m gone,” he said, his voice weak but filled with a haunting determination, “I tell you, don’t smoke. Whatever you do, just don’t smoke.” The commercial was specifically scheduled to air only after his death.

When it finally appeared on television screens across America in late 1985, millions of viewers were stunned. Here was a man speaking to them from beyond the grave, warning them not to make the catastrophic mistake that had killed him. The impact of this final act was absolutely profound.

Countless people quit smoking after seeing Brynner’s final message. It was Brynner’s last performance and, in many ways, his most important. However, Brynner’s life had been defined by a different kind of performance, one that lasted 34 years and spanned 4,625 individual stage appearances.

From 1951 to 1985, Yul Brynner played the King of Siam in the musical The King and I, first on Broadway, then in the 1956 film version that earned him an Academy Award, and eventually in countless revivals and touring productions. He owned the role so completely that it became inseparable from his public identity.

And that ownership extended far beyond the confines of the stage. In his daily life, Brynner demanded to be treated like true royalty. He insisted that other actors stand perfectly still and silent whenever he spoke his lines, and he required them to remain at least 10 feet away from him at all times.

He controlled every single aspect of his performances and, whenever possible, every aspect of the productions he worked on. Brynner was the king on stage and off, and kings do not tolerate rebellion. Which is precisely why what happened on the set of The Magnificent Seven in 1960 drove Brynner to a fury he would carry for the rest of his life.

A young actor, a nobody from television, a punk with only seven lines of dialogue, systematically dismantled Brynner’s carefully crafted authority. This rebel upstaged the king in scene after scene, using subtle tricks and techniques that drew all attention away from the star and onto himself. The young actor’s name was Steve McQueen.

By the time filming wrapped, McQueen had transformed from an unknown TV actor into a rising movie star, while Brynner fumed helplessly, watching his meticulously constructed dominance crumble before his eyes. Yul Brynner truly hated Steve McQueen more than anyone else in his life.

It was not just because McQueen defied him, but because McQueen succeeded in ways that exposed everything Brynner secretly feared about himself. Try not to gasp when you learn the full story, because this isn’t just about two actors fighting for screen time; this is about a king who controlled everything except the one thing that mattered most.

This is about a rebel who refused to bow to anyone. And this is about a poignant deathbed phone call twenty years later that changed everything between these two giants of cinema.

On July 11th, 1920, in Vladivostok, a city carved from the chaos of post-revolutionary Russia, Yuliy Borisovich Bryner was born into a world of both uncertainty and privilege. His father, Boris Yuliyevich Bryner, was a successful mining engineer from a prominent and wealthy family.

Yul’s grandfather, Jules Bryner, had emigrated from Switzerland in the 1870s and built a thriving import-export business. The family lived in a beautiful four-story mansion on Ulitskaya Street, one of the most stunning early 20th-century homes in the city, designed by the renowned German architect Georg Jungehandel.

His mother, Marusya Dmitrievna Blagovidova, came from the cultured Russian intelligentsia. She had studied to be an actress and singer before her marriage, bringing deep artistic sensibility into the household. Young Yul grew up surrounded by both the harsh realities of business acumen and the light of creative passion.

But this comfortable world shattered when Yul was only four years old. In 1924, Boris Bryner fell in love with a young Russian actress named Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova. She was the ex-wife of actor Aleksey Dikiy and a stage partner of Michael Chekhov at the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre.

Boris left his family to pursue this glamorous actress. The abandonment devastated young Yul. While his father did not disappear completely and continued to provide financial support, the emotional damage was permanent. At four years old, Yul learned a brutal, formative lesson.

The people you love can leave you at any moment. Trust is fragile and dangerous. And if you want to keep people close, you must learn to control them completely. Marusya eventually took her children, Yul and his older sister Vera, to Harbin, China, where there was a large Russian emigre community.

They attended a YMCA school, where Yul learned Russian, Chinese, and the cold art of survival in a foreign land. He was a restless, high-energy child, prone to mischief and complex lies even then. He told his classmates elaborate stories about his background, constantly inventing and reinventing himself.

In 1933, with tensions rising between Japan and China, Marusya moved the family again, this time to Paris. Yul was only 13 years old and had already lived in three different countries. He was sent to the exclusive Lycée Monceau, but his attendance was erratic and spotty at best.

He was far more interested in music and sports than in academics. It was in Paris that Yul discovered his true passion. In the streets of Montmartre, he heard a touring Russian Gypsy troupe performing; the music was wild, passionate, and free, and it completely captivated his young soul.

He learned to play the guitar and soon found work playing in nightclubs among the Russian Gypsies. They gave him his first real sense of family and belonging. At 15, he dropped out of school entirely to chase a life of excitement.

He became a daring trapeze artist with the famed Cirque d’Hiver company. For three years, he flew through the air, defying gravity, living on nothing but pure adrenaline and the sound of applause. Then, at 17, disaster struck in the form of a serious back injury from a fall that ended his circus career.

The physical pain was unbearable for him. Someone gave him opium to help manage the agony, and within weeks, Yul was addicted. His family, terrified by his rapid decline, sent him to Switzerland for intensive treatment.

He spent a year in Lausanne at a clinic and university hospital, undergoing experimental hypnotherapy and grueling rehabilitation. It was all funded by his aunt, Vera, a physician who had been trained in St. Petersburg before the revolution.

The treatment eventually worked, and Yul never touched illegal drugs again. However, he replaced one addiction with another: cigarettes. He started smoking heavily, sometimes three or four packs a day. It was a dark habit that would eventually lead to his death.

But smoking also gave him something he craved: a sense of control. It provided control over his anxiety and control over his manufactured image. The cigarette dangling from his lips became part of his iconic persona—dangerous, exotic, and inherently unknowable. The seeds of the king were firmly planted. Control everything, or lose everything.

In 1940, Yul and his mother emigrated to the United States. Marusya was suffering from leukemia and desperately needed treatments that were only available in America. They settled in New York City, where Yul pursued acting seriously for the very first time.

He studied under Michael Chekhov, the nephew of the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. Chekhov had relocated from the Moscow Art Theatre to establish a famous acting workshop in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Under his stern guidance, Yul learned technique, discipline, and the absolute importance of complete commitment to a role.

In 1941, Yul made his Broadway debut in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, playing the role of Fabian. He was billed as Yul Brynner. Critics barely noticed him, but he was learning, growing, and slowly finding his footing in the competitive world of American theater.

In 1944, he married actress Virginia Gilmore. They became one of the quintessential Hollywood couples, even starring together in one of television’s first talk shows, Mr. and Mrs., in 1948. The marriage produced a son, Rock, born in 1946. Yul nicknamed him Rock, after the famous boxer Rocky Graziano.

But Yul’s acting career was stalling. He was getting small parts and brief appearances, nothing that suggested the massive stardom to come. He even spent time working as a television director at CBS, staying behind the camera rather than being in front of it.

Then, in 1951, everything changed forever. Mary Martin, the legendary Broadway star who had originated Peter Pan and countless other iconic roles, was preparing a new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical called The King and I. The show desperately needed an actor to play the King of Siam opposite Deborah Kerr’s Anna Leonowens.

Martin recommended Yul Brynner for the part. It was an incredibly unlikely choice. Brynner was relatively unknown, having played mostly small supporting roles. But Martin saw something deep within him—a magnetic presence, an unyielding authority, and an exotic quality that could make the King truly compelling.

Brynner was invited to audition. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were skeptical at first. Then, Brynner began to speak. His voice, deep, commanding, and carrying a slight, indefinable accent, filled the room. His physicality, with his erect posture and controlled movements, suggested natural royalty.

They offered him the role on the spot. For the part, Brynner decided to shave his head completely. It was a dramatic and bold choice in 1951, a time when men simply did not have shaved heads. But it gave Brynner an instantly recognizable, iconic silhouette.

Combined with his mixed heritage—Swiss, Russian, and Mongolian—the bald head made him look timeless, placeless, and inherently exotic. The King and I opened on Broadway on March 29th, 1951. From the very first opening night, it was clear that something truly extraordinary was happening.

Brynner didn’t just play the king; he became the king. His performance was commanding, nuanced, and passionate. He brought immense complexity to a character that could have easily been a one-dimensional tyrant. The king was stubborn, proud, and occasionally cruel, but also curious, vulnerable, and deeply conflicted about his changing world.

Audiences were completely mesmerized. Critics raved about his intensity. Brynner eventually won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. The show ran for 1,246 performances over the course of three years. But something else happened during that long, grueling run.

Brynner developed a rigid method for maintaining total control on the stage. He insisted that other actors stand perfectly still and silent whenever he delivered his lines. He required them to remain at least 10 feet away unless the staging specifically called for closer proximity.

These weren’t official rules, but they were Brynner’s personal demands, enforced through the sheer force of his personality and the immense clout of being the star. It worked perfectly. Brynner’s co-stars complied out of necessity or fear.

Brynner learned a crucial life lesson: If you act like a king, people will eventually treat you like a king. In 1956, 20th Century Fox produced a major film version of The King and I. Brynner reprised his role opposite Deborah Kerr, who had been cast instead of Mary Martin.

Kerr was a consummate professional and a major star in her own right. She found Brynner’s controlling behavior difficult to endure but managed it with grace and patience. The film was a massive, global success. At the 1957 Academy Awards, Yul Brynner won the Oscar for Best Actor.

He was no longer just an actor; he was the king, and he would spend the rest of his life making sure that everyone around him knew it.

In 1956, the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille was preparing his final epic, The Ten Commandments. It was a biblical spectacular about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. DeMille needed two powerful leading men: one to play Moses, and one to play Ramses II, the pharaoh of Egypt.

For Moses, DeMille cast Charlton Heston, a rising star known for his intense method approach to acting. For Ramses, DeMille wanted Yul Brynner. It was perfect, inspired casting. Brynner’s exotic look, his commanding presence, and his recent success as the King of Siam made him the ideal candidate for an Egyptian pharaoh.

DeMille offered him the role, and Brynner accepted immediately. But putting two high-intensity alpha males in the same production created inevitable, grinding tension. Heston was dedicated, disciplined, and deeply committed to serving the director’s grand vision.

He arrived on set fully prepared, took direction without a single complaint, and focused entirely on the craft. Brynner, however, operated very differently. He was fresh off his major Oscar win for The King and I. He was used to being deferred to, catered to, and treated as absolute royalty.

On the enormous set of The Ten Commandments, with its thousands of extras, massive constructed cities, and multiple units filming simultaneously, Brynner expected special treatment. He demanded the best lighting for all his scenes.

He insisted on final approval of his camera angles. He wanted his costumes to be more elaborate and distinctive than anyone else’s, with the sole exception of Heston’s. When he didn’t get exactly what he wanted, he made his intense displeasure known to everyone within earshot.

Heston later recalled in his autobiography that Brynner had a massive presence, and that when he walked onto the set, you knew the king had arrived. It was a diplomatic way of saying that Brynner acted like royalty and expected everyone to treat him accordingly.

Cecil B. DeMille, however, was one director who would not be controlled by any actor. DeMille was 75 years old, a legendary filmmaker who had been making movies since 1914. He had directed over 70 films, surviving the difficult transition from silent film to sound, and from black and white to color.

He was not about to let an actor, even a talented, Oscar-winning one, tell him how to make his picture. DeMille and Brynner clashed repeatedly throughout the production. DeMille wanted shots that served the overall story and the historical scale.

Brynner wanted shots that served Brynner. DeMille always had the final word because he was the director and the producer, but the tension on set was palpable. Heston, observing all of this, concluded that Brynner was talented but incredibly difficult to work with.

In his journal, Heston wrote that Brynner was a fine actor when he wasn’t being impossible. Heston preferred to work with professionals who didn’t require constant, exhausting ego management. The film itself was a massive success, standing as one of the highest-grossing films of the entire 1950s.

Both Heston and Brynner received high praise for their performances. Brynner’s Ramses was imperious, magnetic, and a truly credible opponent for Heston’s Moses. But the production solidified Brynner’s reputation in Hollywood: brilliant actor, major talent, and an impossible personality.

By 1960, Brynner was at the absolute peak of his career. He was an Oscar winner, he was wealthy, and he was famous worldwide. He was married to his second wife, Doris Kleiner, a Chilean model, and he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Then, director John Sturges offered him the lead role in a Western called The Magnificent Seven, an American remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Brynner would play Chris, the leader of seven gunfighters hired to protect a poor Mexican village.

Brynner accepted, and top billing was guaranteed by contract. He would be the star, the leader, the king of the West. What he didn’t know was that the studio had insisted on casting a young actor from television to help attract a younger audience to the theaters.

That actor was Steve McQueen. And Steve McQueen simply didn’t bow to anyone.

In March 1960, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, about 80 kilometers south of Mexico City, the cast and crew of The Magnificent Seven gathered to begin filming. It was a highly prestigious project—a Western remake of one of the greatest films ever made—with a talented ensemble cast including Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, and others.

Steve McQueen arrived at the Jacarandas Hotel and immediately noticed something that deeply irritated him. Yul Brynner had been given a private villa and a personal trailer on the set. McQueen was given a standard hotel room with no special accommodations.

It was a small thing, perhaps, but it firmly established the hierarchy. Brynner was the star, and McQueen was merely the supporting cast. For McQueen, this was completely unacceptable. At 30 years old, he had been grinding for years to make it in Hollywood.

He was the lead in the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, where he played the bounty hunter Josh Randall. He had trained at the famous Actors Studio. He was hungry, even desperate, to break into genuine film stardom.

The real problem was his assigned role. In the original script, McQueen’s character, Vin, had only seven lines of dialogue. Seven lines in the entire film. Meanwhile, Brynner’s Chris had the most screen time, the best scenes, and the most dramatic moments.

McQueen went to director John Sturges and complained bitterly. He couldn’t build a character with only seven lines. He needed more to work with. Sturges, who actually liked McQueen and had worked with him on Never So Few, tried to reassure him.

“I’ll give you the camera,” Sturges promised. It was a vague statement, but McQueen took it as explicit permission. If he couldn’t have dialogue, he would have attention. If he couldn’t dominate through words, he would dominate through action.

From the very first day of filming, McQueen began his campaign. The opening scene was a funeral in a dusty Western town. Brynner’s Chris was delivering a speech about the dead man. It was a dramatic moment, establishing Chris as a man of principle.

McQueen stood in the background. He wasn’t even supposed to be the focus of the shot, but McQueen started doing things—small, subtle things. He removed his hat to shade his eyes from the sun. He flipped a coin casually. He rattled the shotgun shells in his hand. He adjusted his heavy gun belt.

Each action was subtle and natural-seeming, but each action drew the eye away from Brynner and toward McQueen. Brynner noticed it immediately. Between takes, he was absolutely furious. He told Sturges that McQueen was upstaging him.

Sturges tried to manage the situation diplomatically, but McQueen refused to stop. In fact, Brynner became so obsessed with McQueen’s scene-stealing that he hired a production assistant just to count how many times McQueen touched his hat during Brynner’s speeches.

The count for one single scene was 42 times. McQueen’s tactics extended far beyond hat tricks. He was a genuine expert with firearms from his years on Wanted: Dead or Alive. He knew how to draw fast, spin guns, and handle weapons with real flair.

On set, he showed off these skills constantly, doing fancy gun spins and practicing quick draws between takes. Brynner, by contrast, was uncomfortable with guns. He didn’t ride horses well, either. He was an actor of stage and presence, not action and athletics.

McQueen recognized these weaknesses and exploited them mercilessly. He taught some of the other actors gun techniques, but he kept his best tricks to himself, refusing to help Brynner look more confident on camera.

Then, there was the height issue. Brynner was 5 foot 10 and very sensitive about it. He had been conscious of his height for years, wearing lifts in his shoes and demanding camera angles that wouldn’t make him look short.

On The Magnificent Seven set, he ordered the crew to build small mounds of dirt on his marks—places where he would stand for certain shots—so he would appear taller than McQueen. McQueen discovered these dirt mounds and began kicking them apart before each take.

It happened repeatedly throughout the entire production. The crew watched in awkward, painful silence as this petty warfare played out day after day. The most famous incident occurred during the river crossing scene.

All seven gunfighters were riding their horses across a river. It was supposed to be a group shot, showcasing the camaraderie of the seven. But as they rode, McQueen suddenly leaned down from his horse and scooped water with his hat.

It was a brilliant move. The gesture was perfectly natural, a man cooling off on a hot day. But cinematically, it pulled every viewer’s eye directly to McQueen. The entire shot became about him, not the group.

Brynner was so angry that he confronted McQueen physically. In front of the entire cast and crew, he grabbed McQueen by the shoulder. “He was mad about something,” McQueen later recalled. “He doesn’t ride well and knows nothing about guns, so maybe he thought I represented a threat.”

Brynner’s unspoken message was clear: “Stop upstaging me. I’m the star, you’re supporting cast. Remember your place.” McQueen’s response was equally clear. He didn’t back down. He didn’t apologize. He stood his ground, staring into Brynner’s eyes until the older actor finally released him and walked away.

The feud became so intense that reporters started writing about it. Newspapers ran stories about the bitter tension on The Magnificent Seven set. Brynner, concerned about his public image, eventually issued a formal press statement.

“I never feud with actors,” he claimed. “I feud with studios.” Then, he privately confronted McQueen again. “They say in the newspapers that we got into a fight,” Brynner told him. “But I’m a star. I don’t fight with supporting roles. I want you to call the newspaper and tell them that this story is a tissue of lies.”

McQueen’s response was direct and profane. “You know what I do with your orders? Get the hell out of it.” The filming continued in this hostile atmosphere. Sturges was caught in the middle, unable to control either man.

The other actors—Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach—watched the warfare with a mixture of amusement and discomfort. Ironically, Brynner invited the entire cast and crew to his wedding during the production. He was marrying Doris Kleiner right there on the set. Everyone was invited, except for Steve McQueen.

When The Magnificent Seven was finally released, critics immediately noticed what had happened. Despite having minimal dialogue, Steve McQueen was everywhere in the film. He was the breakout star. Audiences left the theater talking about McQueen, not Brynner.

The box office told the same story. The film disappointed domestically, but it became a massive international hit. And internationally, posters often featured McQueen as prominently as Brynner. The rebel prince had effectively dethroned the king.

In the years following The Magnificent Seven, the cast members’ reflections on the production revealed the true depth of the Brynner-McQueen conflict. James Coburn, who played the knife-throwing expert Britt, became particularly vocal about his dislike of Brynner.

In interviews decades later, Coburn called Brynner a royal pain in the ass. Coburn, known for his cool, laid-back personality, rarely spoke ill of anyone. The fact that he held a grudge against Brynner for so long spoke volumes.

“I much preferred working with guys like Bronson or Vaughn,” Coburn said in one interview. “Actors who were focused on the work, not on controlling the set. Yul had to be the center of attention at all times. It got exhausting.”

Robert Vaughn, who played the gunfighter Lee, wrote about the experience in his 2008 autobiography, A Fortunate Life. Vaughn provided detailed, keen observations about both Brynner and McQueen.

“Steve was intensely competitive,” Vaughn wrote. “It wasn’t enough just to be successful. He had to be more successful than anyone else.” But Vaughn also noted that McQueen’s competitiveness extended to absurd details.

“Steve was jealous of Yul’s gun in the movie,” Vaughn revealed. “He thought his own gun didn’t look as good. He was also jealous that Yul’s horse was bigger. These petty jealousies drove much of McQueen’s scene-stealing behavior.”

Charles Bronson, the veteran character actor who played Bernardo O’Reilly, maintained good relationships with both men, though he stayed carefully neutral during the filming. Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland, was close friends with McQueen’s wife, Neile Adams.

The two families socialized together, but Bronson was famously a loner on set, focused on his own work rather than the office politics of the leads. Eli Wallach, who played the bandit leader Calvera, later said, “Bronson was a loner. He kept to himself and just did his job brilliantly. He was smart to stay out of the Yul and Steve drama.”

For Brynner, the aftermath of The Magnificent Seven was professionally successful, but personally embittering. The film became a classic. His performance was praised, but he could never escape the fact that Steve McQueen had effectively stolen the picture from him.

Brynner’s response was to become even more controlling. On future films, he demanded strict contractual guarantees about his billing, his screen time, and his approval of other cast members. He refused to work with what he called “difficult young actors,” which really meant actors who might challenge his authority.

Throughout the 1960s, Brynner’s film career gradually declined. He appeared in movies like Taras Bulba, Kings of the Sun, and Westworld, but none achieved the massive success of The King and I or The Ten Commandments.

He was still a big name, but he was no longer the biggest name in Hollywood. Meanwhile, Steve McQueen’s career exploded. In 1963, he starred in The Great Escape, another film with director John Sturges, and became a global superstar.

In 1968, he made Bullitt, which featured one of the most famous car chase scenes in cinema history, cementing him as the ultimate cultural icon. By the early 1970s, McQueen was the biggest box office draw in the industry.

The contrast must have been painful for Brynner to witness. The punk with seven lines who upstaged him had become everything Brynner aspired to be: the undisputed king of Hollywood cool. Brynner eventually returned to Broadway and The King and I.

He did revivals in 1977 and throughout the early 1980s. He toured the country with the production, playing sold-out houses everywhere he went. Audiences still loved him as the king. It was safe, familiar territory where no one challenged his absolute authority.

But in his private life, Brynner’s relationships continued to reflect his deep-seated control issues. His marriage to Doris Kleiner ended in divorce in 1967. He married Jacqueline de Croisset in 1971 and adopted two Vietnamese orphans, Mia and Melody.

That marriage also ended in divorce in 1981. His pattern was painfully clear. He couldn’t maintain long-term relationships with people who had their own strong wills. In 1983, at age 63, Brynner married for a fourth time to Kathy Lee.

That same year, he received the diagnosis he had long feared. The king was dying, and he knew it.

In December 1979, Steve McQueen received the diagnosis he had been dreading: pleural mesothelioma. It was a rare, aggressive form of lung cancer caused by long-term asbestos exposure. Given McQueen’s lifelong passion for racing and working on cars and motorcycles in dusty, industrial environments, the diagnosis wasn’t entirely surprising, but it was devastating nonetheless.

The doctors gave him only months to live, maybe a year if he was lucky. There was no effective treatment. Radiation and chemotherapy offered minimal, if any, benefit for this specific type of cancer. McQueen, only 49 years old, began to face his own mortality.

He was at the peak of his fame, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. But he quickly realized that fame means absolutely nothing when you are dying. His wife, Neile Adams, stayed by his side through the entire grueling ordeal.

McQueen had lived a hard life—multiple marriages, affairs, addiction struggles, dangerous stunts, and a reputation for being difficult on sets. Now, facing his end, he began to deeply reflect on his choices and his relationships.

One name kept coming up in his quiet reflections: Yul Brynner. McQueen hadn’t spoken to Brynner since The Magnificent Seven wrapped twenty years earlier. The feud, though never publicly acknowledged by either man after Brynner’s initial press statement, had lingered silently.

They had avoided each other at industry events. They had never worked together again. The bad blood had remained frozen in time. But now, with his time running out, McQueen saw things differently. Yes, he had upstaged Brynner. Yes, he had been intentionally difficult. Yes, he had done everything he could to steal focus from the older actor.

But McQueen also recognized something crucial. Brynner could have easily had him fired. As the star and top-billed actor, Brynner held enormous power on The Magnificent Seven set. If he had gone to the studio and demanded McQueen’s removal, the studio almost certainly would have complied.

McQueen was a nobody in 1960. Just a TV actor getting his first major film role. He was entirely replaceable. But Brynner never did that. Despite all the provocations, despite all the upstaging, and despite all the humiliation, Brynner never used his power to destroy McQueen’s career.

He could have. He probably wanted to. But he didn’t. And The Magnificent Seven made Steve McQueen a star. Everything that followed—The Great Escape, Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair, Papillon, The Getaway—all of it stemmed from audiences noticing him in that Western where he supposedly had only seven lines.

In his final months, McQueen decided he needed to make things right. He needed to thank Brynner. He needed to acknowledge what Brynner could have done but chose not to. In 1980, McQueen placed a phone call to Yul Brynner.

The conversation, as later recounted by people close to both men, went approximately like this: “Yul, it’s Steve McQueen.” There was silence on the other end. Then, “Steve, I need to tell you something. I’m dying. Lung cancer. I don’t have much time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Brynner replied, his voice softening. “I wanted to call because… Look, I was a bastard on The Magnificent Seven. I know I was. I rattled you. I upstaged you. I did everything I could to pull focus from you.”

“Yes, you did,” Brynner said quietly. “But you could have had me kicked off the movie,” McQueen continued. “You had the power. One word to the studio and I would have been gone. But you didn’t do it. You let me stay. And that picture made me.”

“Everything I became after that, it all started because you didn’t destroy me when you could have. So, thanks. That’s what I wanted to say. Thank you.” There was a very long pause. Then Brynner spoke, his voice heavy with hidden emotion.

“I am the king and you are the rebel prince. Every bit as royal and dangerous to cross.” It was a profound statement. Brynner was finally acknowledging that McQueen wasn’t just some upstart punk. He was a worthy opponent, a legitimate challenger to the throne.

Someone with his own power and his own unique legitimacy. “A king needs a rebel prince,” Brynner continued, his voice cracking. “Otherwise, what’s he king of?” Both men were crying by the end of the call. They had finally reconciled.

After twenty years of mutual, burning resentment, they finally understood each other. On November 7th, 1980, Steve McQueen died in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just 12 hours after undergoing surgery to remove a massive tumor. He was 50 years old.

Brynner didn’t attend the funeral. It would have been too public, too much of a media spectacle. But he sent flowers and told friends privately, “I lost my rebel prince.”

In 1983, the same year he married Kathy Lee, Yul Brynner received his own cancer diagnosis: lung cancer. Like McQueen, Brynner had been a heavy smoker his entire adult life, since the age of 12, totaling over 70 years of cigarettes.

The cancer was advanced and inoperable. Brynner underwent radiation therapy just to buy a little more time. The treatments made him sick, weak, and barely able to function. But he absolutely refused to stop performing.

In January 1985, despite his deteriorating condition, he continued touring with The King and I. He had played the role 4,625 times over 34 years. He intended to play it until he physically could not take another step.

But Brynner knew he was dying, and unlike many people facing the end of their lives, he had a massive platform to leave a final message. He decided to film an anti-smoking public service announcement to air after his death.

The filming took place in January 1985. Brynner sat in a simple chair; no costume, no makeup, no performance. Just a dying man speaking honestly and directly to the camera. “Now that I’m gone,” he said, his voice weak but determined, “I tell you, don’t smoke.”

“Whatever you do, just don’t smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer. I’m convinced of that.” It was powerful precisely because it wasn’t a performance. There was no King Mongkut, no Ramses, no Chris the Gunfighter.

It was just Yul Brynner, human and vulnerable, warning people not to make his fatal mistake. The PSA was scheduled to air after his death. Brynner wanted maximum impact, and he knew that hearing from someone beyond the grave would be an unforgettable experience for the public.

His final performances of The King and I took place in June 1985. He was so weak that cast members worried he would collapse right there on stage. But Brynner pushed through, driven by sheer, unadulterated will.

His last performance was on June 30th, 1985. The audience gave him a massive standing ovation, unaware that they were watching the king for the very last time. On October 10th, 1985, Yul Brynner died at New York Hospital. He was 65 years old.

His wife, Kathy Lee, and his son, Rock Brynner, were at his bedside. According to Rock, who later wrote a biography of his father, Brynner’s last words included, “Tell them I was the king.” Then, after a long pause, “But Steve was the one who made me fight to stay king.”

It was a remarkable admission. In his final moments, Brynner acknowledged that his greatest rivalry was also his greatest motivation. Steve McQueen had challenged him in ways no one else ever had. And in fighting to maintain his dominance, Brynner had pushed himself to greater heights.

Shortly after Brynner’s death, his anti-smoking PSA began airing on American television. The impact was immediate and profound. Millions of people saw a man speaking to them from beyond the grave, pleading with them not to smoke. The message was impossible to ignore.

Countless people reported quitting smoking after seeing Brynner’s final performance. It was perhaps the most important thing Brynner ever did. Not playing the king 4,625 times. Not winning the Oscar. Not starring in massive Hollywood epics. But using his own death to potentially save thousands of lives.

Brynner was buried in France at the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Bois-Aubry near the village of Luzé. Unlike his flamboyant life, his funeral was simple and private. In 1989, Rock Brynner published a biography titled Yul: The Man Who Would Be King.

The book revealed many truths about his father’s life, including one poignant chapter about Steve McQueen titled “The Rebel Prince My Father Secretly Loved.”

Yul Brynner truly hated Steve McQueen more than anyone. But not because McQueen was a bad person, or even because McQueen upstaged him on The Magnificent Seven. Brynner hated McQueen because McQueen represented everything Brynner wanted to be, but couldn’t allow himself to become: truly free.

From the age of four, when his father abandoned the family, Brynner learned that love and security require absolute control. If you control nothing, you lose everything. So, Brynner spent his life controlling everything he possibly could.

His image, his performances, his co-stars, his entire environment. He played the King 4,625 times because the King was the ultimate expression of control. The King commands; others obey. But that control was also a prison.

Brynner couldn’t stop being the King. He couldn’t let his guard down. He couldn’t allow anyone to challenge his authority without fighting back. His desperate need for control destroyed three marriages, alienated countless colleagues, and left him feeling isolated despite his immense fame.

Steve McQueen was the complete opposite. McQueen was wild, rebellious, and impossible to control. When told he had seven lines, he found ways to dominate the screen anyway. When ordered to stand still and silent, he moved and made noise.

When expected to defer to the star, he became the star instead. And McQueen succeeded. His freedom, his refusal to bow, his rebellion—these qualities didn’t destroy him. They made him a legend. That is what Brynner truly hated: the proof that you didn’t need to control everything to succeed.

He hated the truth that freedom could be stronger than authority, and that the rebel prince could be just as royal as the king. On McQueen’s deathbed call, when he thanked Brynner for not destroying his career, Brynner’s response revealed everything.

“I am the King, and you are the rebel prince. Every bit as royal and dangerous to cross.” Brynner was finally acknowledging that McQueen had his own throne. That rebellion, when properly channeled, was its own form of royalty.

That the king and the rebel prince actually needed each other. One to represent order, one to represent freedom. Try not to gasp when you realize this: The person you hate most is often showing you exactly what you could have been yourself.

Brynner hated McQueen because McQueen was free in ways Brynner never allowed himself to be. The king envied the rebel prince—not for his youth or his talent or his success—but for his chain-free existence.

And in the end, both men died of the same disease they couldn’t control: lung cancer, the result of decades of smoking. The king controlled everything except the one thing that eventually killed him. The rebel prince lived free and died young.

Who won? Perhaps the answer is that neither did. Or perhaps they both won. Brynner won through his final anti-smoking message that saved countless lives, and McQueen won through a career that redefined what movie stardom could be.

But the deepest truth is this: Your greatest rival is often your greatest teacher. Brynner pushed McQueen to fight for every inch of screen time. McQueen pushed Brynner to acknowledge that control alone isn’t enough.

Try not to gasp when you understand that the person you hate isn’t your enemy. They are your mirror, showing you the parts of yourself you are too afraid to face. The king and the rebel prince, both royal, both dangerous, both prisoners of their own nature.

And in their final conversation, twenty years after their war, they finally understood. They had needed each other all along. It was never about the seven lines of dialogue, or the hat flips, or the dirt mounds on the ground.

It was about two men, both fiercely driven, both haunted by their pasts, recognizing the reflection of their own souls in the eyes of their greatest opponent. They were the two sides of the same coin of human ambition, destined to collide and eventually find peace in the final, fading moments of their lives.

Brynner’s final performance was not on a Broadway stage, and McQueen’s greatest scene was not in a Western movie. Their greatest performance was the act of forgiveness, reaching across the chasm of two decades to admit that they were not alone in their struggle.

As the curtains closed on both of their lives, the echoes of the King and the Rebel Prince remained, reminding the world that even the most powerful people are merely human, chasing ghosts, seeking validation, and eventually, in the silence, looking for someone who truly understands the weight of the crown they carry.

They were both icons, both broken, both legends. And in the end, that is all that really mattered.