who knew Damian Lewis looked so much like.....

In the first shot behind his head...the hair looked way wrong. Too fluffed out in all directions. But once they got him inside the mansion grounds, the combination of shadows and likely CGI...gave us the McQueen Face: permanently furrowed brow, lidded eyes, etc.

Also: the pretty woman NEXT to "McQueen" was a dead ringer for a hot dancer-singer of the time named Joey Heatherton. I''m guessing either QT found a dead ringer or used CGI footage of the original Heatherton there, too.

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When that scene takes place(February 1969), Steve McQueen had just become the biggest star in Hollywood, because his car chase action thriller "Bullitt" had come out at Christmas 1968 and just kept playing into 1969. It struck me as funny, given how "working class and real" McQueen had been as the cop Frank Bullitt, to see him as "just another party guy in Hollywood." Illlusion/reality.

Steve McQueen interwove with the Manson murder of Sharon Tate in several ways:

ONE: McQueen was invited to go up to that house that night, to party with Tate and Sebring, et al. He didn't make it(but then about 1,000 other Hollywood people ALSO said they were invited up there.)

TWO: After the murders happened but before the Manson Family was found to house the killers, acerbic Holllywood agent Sue Mengers told McQueen, "Don't worry, Steve..they're not killing stars, only featured players."

THREE: McQueen was among those stars to quite noisily start carrying a gun after the murders, along with beefing up his private security.

FOUR: Robert Evans, the Paramount studio head who had produced Rosemary's Baby and knew Polanski and Tate personally, also would come to hate Steve McQueen. McQueen "stole away" Evans' wife Ali MacGraw when McQueen and MacGraw made "The Getaway." Retroactively, years later, Robert Evans noted that "the only friend who didn't come to Sharon Tate's funeral was Steve McQueen, and she loved the sonofabitch." Read that as we may.