Steve McQueen: Widows inspired me when I was young – I hope my version does the same today

Steve McQueen says he hopes his new film Widows inspires audiences the way he was by the original 1983 ITV drama version.

Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki are among the cast of women who take on their dead husbands’ plans to carry out a robbery after they are killed in a botched heist.

McQueen moved the action from Eighties London to the present-day US but said he had never forgotten the Lynda La Plante original.

He said: “I was a 13-year-old kid and watched it for the first time 35 years ago and it was just one of those things, I had a sort of connection with those women.

"They were being judged by their appearance, they were being viewed as not being capable and I was being judged in the same way as a black child in London in the Eighties.

“That was the connection for me and seeing them overcome all those stereotypes was very exciting and I hope this does the same.”

The film has been hailed as a triumph by critics but McQueen laughed off speculation his success with a thriller made him the favourite to direct a future Bond film, saying: “Bond? What is that? Who said that? I don’t know about that. That’s not been a consideration for me.”

McQueen, who started out as a video artist before moving into commercial filmmaking, said more needed to be done to get women’s voices on the big screen but that this year’s BFI London Film Festival, where Widows is being shown, had made a start.

He said: “I’m very proud of the fact that 38 per cent of the directors showing their features here are women and no other festival has done that.”