Steve McQueen on his hero Harry Belafonte: ‘He had everything – but his service was to his people’

Harry Belafonte was a hero of mine. He meant everything to me. I met him around the release of 12 Years a Slave, and he became a mentor. I received a best director award at the New York Film Critics Circle awards and Harry gave an amazing speech: he talked about seeing Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan at the cinema as a child and how the depiction of people of African descent made him feel being ashamed to be Black.

Look what he did – he was the first person to make an album that sold more than 1m records. He was Martin Luther King’s closest confidant and he supported his family. He was the main organiser to get Hollywood people involved in the civil rights movement, bringing people like Sidney Poitier. He was close to Bobby Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt. And he was an artist, and he was an actor; he studied with Brando, Brando was one of his best friends. He really was a renaissance man if there ever was one, and extraordinarily good looking. He had everything, but his service was always to his people. He told me that the civil rights days were scary – what he sacrificed and what he did for the good of people was incredible.

Harry didn’t compromise. When he wasn’t getting the roles that he thought that he deserved, he just went and did his music. And I think that vision came from his mentor Paul Robeson, who said: “Why don’t you sing your song?”

Harry understood that he was a Black man of the diaspora – his background was in Jamaica, his upbringing was in America, and he travelled the world as a Black man in the entertainment industry. He was an American but an internationalist – a man of the world. He was in Africa, he was in Cuba, he was in eastern Europe. Harry’s reach was global – he was world famous. His drive was incredible. He didn’t stop until he dropped.

We had plans to make a film about Robeson and we worked on it for a little while, but some things don’t always come together. The last time I heard from Harry was when I got a text from him and his wife Pam saying that they’d just watched Small Axe: “Brilliant, bravo, we send our love and thoughts through these crazy times, Pam and Harry.”

A child of the West Indies growing up in America and reaching the heights of international stardom. That was Harry. I loved him very, very much.