Steve McQueen and a 1968 Ford Mustang GT390 fastback starred in Bullitt.
Less known is that his professional teammate did the vast majority of the driving and was so much faster that had he shared with anyone of similar calibre, they almost certainly would have won.
Paul Newman's record is more impressive, particularly as he didn't start his first race until he was 47. He came second in an even bigger race than McQueen's - the Le Mans 24 Hours of 1979. Then he managed third in the Daytona 24 Hours, aged 70, before sharing a car in the same race with F1 stars Cristiano da Matta and Sebastien Bourdais at the astonishing age of 80.
And then there's Gene Hackman. Hackman once said that if at age 17 he'd had the choice of becoming a movie star or a racing driver, he'd have chosen racing.
As it is, he competed in Formula Ford in the late 1970s, before his career culminated in a drive for Dan Gurney at the Daytona 24 Hours in a Toyota he shared with Masanori Sekiya, who would later become the first Japanese driver to win Le Mans.
James Garner was so good in the movie Grand Prix that he did his own driving.
But perhaps the actor with the single greatest talent was James Garner, who played Pete Aron in the film Grand Prix. He'd never sat in a racecar before, but as soon as he knew he had the part, he spent two months at race school, working through junior formulae, preparing for the F1 cars his character would drive.
So while fellow actors crawled around the tracks and had to be doubled for difficult sequences, when you see Pete Aron racing, you're seeing Garner. He even bailed out of his burning Yamura when the stunt man failed to turn up.
In the film you clearly see Garner driving a blazing car and when it blows up in his face as he leaps over the side, those were Garner's eyebrows getting singed.
Garner held his own among professionals such as Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt who were hired to do the proper driving, and even doubled for other actors. Some claimed he was as quick as Rindt, which seems doubtful, but even being near that pace suggests no other actor approached his level of driving talent.
The only reason he did not go on to carve a second career on the track was that his determination to race was exceeded by his insurers' determination that he would not.
But what of the current crop of Hollywood stars? The pickings are slimmer but still there: Newman became friends with Tom Cruise while filming The Color of Money, sufficiently so to invite him to race with him in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) meetings. Cruise was fast - a fact attested to by his pace around the Top Gear test track - but also inclined to crash a lot.
Frankie Muniz gave it a crack but was only a mid-field runner. Picture / Getty Images
By contrast Malcolm in the Middle's Frankie Muniz threw everything he could at racing, ending up driving a very serious formula of junior Indianapolis-style open-wheel racing car. But despite two full seasons in the sport, he was a mid-field runner at best.
Grey's Anatomy's Patrick Dempsey has said he'd happily give up acting if it meant he could pursue racing full time. He has competed at Le Mans three times, done six Daytona 24 Hours and full seasons in both Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series, and while victories have eluded him, he is regarded as a serious and committed driver.
In Britain, while there is a smattering of rock stars who race, such as Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, the acting fraternity leaves it to Rowan Atkinson, who is a helpless car addict and a formidable racer of historic machinery. Having shared track space with him a few times, I can vouch for a driving style that is often exuberant and always fast.
Rowan Atkinson, a car addict, says the Rolls-Royce Phantom V16 is unbelievably quick and a genuine delight.
But that's it: when it comes to driving fast, it seems most thespians would rather perform in front of a green screen than get on the track to see what real action feels like.
-Telegraph Group Ltd
