Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen has received the royal knighthood, Variety reports. From now on, throughout the U.K. and beyond, he will be known as Sir Steve McQueen.
McQueen was invested with the knighthood on Tuesday at Windsor Castle. Because Queen Elizabeth II is physically ailing, her daughter Princess Anne filled in for her during the ceremony, tapping McQueen on both shoulders with a ceremonial sword. At the event, the director was accompanied by his mother Mary.
🎖️Congratulations Sir Steve McQueen!
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) March 15, 2022
The Oscar, @BAFTA and Golden Globe winning director today received his Knighthood from The Princess Royal during an Investiture Ceremony at Windsor Castle. pic.twitter.com/vJwZI3aCQy
In 2013, McQueen earned a Best Picture Oscar for producing 12 Years a Slave and garnered critical acclaim for directing the ensemble crime thriller Widows in 2018, which starred Viola Davis.
He released his most ambitious project to date, Small Axe, a five-part film series at the end of 2020, which chronicled the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Currently, McQueen is working on his next feature film titled Blitz.
"Blitz is the one we’re working on, which we hopefully start sometime in the autumn,” he told Princess Anne during the ceremony. “It’s about London, starting in 1940, this is what we’re attempting to do and we’ll see how it pans out.”
