Rod Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an American Academy Award-winning actor known for his intense performances in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Waterloo, On the Waterfront, and Doctor Zhivago.
Steiger was born Rodney Stephen Steiger in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger, of French, Scottish, and German descent. Steiger was raised in the Lutheran religion. He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a travelling song-and-dance team with Steiger's mother (who subsequently left show business). Steiger grew up with his alcoholic mother before running away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw combat on destroyers in the Pacific. After the war, he returned to New Jersey and joined a drama group before studying drama full-time under Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan at The Actors Studio.
Rod Steiger started his acting career in live television and the theatre in the early 50s. On May 24th, 1953 an episode of Goodyear Television Playhouse jump-started his career. The episode was the story of "Marty" written by Paddy Chayefsky. "Marty" is the story of a lonely homely butcher from the Bronx in search of love. Refusing to sign a seven year studio contract, Steiger later turned down the role in the film version in 1955. Signing a studio contract at that time would "pigeon-hole" Steiger as to the roles he would later play and image portrayed on screen. Those two things Steiger objected to throughout his career. The role of Marty was turned over to Ernest Borgnine. Ernest would receive the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Rod Steiger never regretted his decision to turn down the film role of Marty.
Steiger appeared in over 100 motion pictures. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967) opposite Sidney Poitier. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for On the Waterfront (1954), in which he played Marlon Brando's character's brother. The most famous scene in the film is when Brando's Terry Malloy tells his brother that he "coulda been a contender." He was nominated again, this time for Best Actor, for the gritty The Pawnbroker (1965), a Sidney Lumet film in which Steiger portrays an emotionally withdrawn Holocaust survivor living in New York City.
He played Jud Fry in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, in which he did his own singing. One of his favorite roles was as the rapacious aristocrat Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965). Steiger, the only American in the cast of that film, was initially apprehensive about working with such great British actors as Ralph Richardson and Alec Guinness and was afraid that he would stick out. However, his fears proved unfounded, as he won much acclaim for his role in this film. He also befriended fellow actor Tom Courtenay on this film; the two remained friends until Steiger's death.
He appeared in many memorable roles: in The Big Knife as an overly aggressive movie studio boss who berates movie star Jack Palance; as Al Capone in Al Capone (1959); as the unforgettable Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One; as a theatre actor/serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady; and as a tragically repressed gay noncommissioned military officer in The Sergeant.
Steiger in 1978.
He also played well-known figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte in Waterloo (1970); Benito Mussolini in The Last Four Days (1974) and again in Lion in the Desert (1981); W.C. Fields in W.C. Fields and Me (1976); Pontius Pilate in Franco Zeffirelli's TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977); and mob boss Sam Giancana in the TV miniseries Sinatra (1992). He appeared in several Italian films, including Hands Over the City (1963) and Lucky Luciano (1974) (both Francesco Rosi's), and also Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dynamite (1971). In France, he starred in Claude Chabrol's Innocents with Dirty Hands opposite Romy Schneider.
Among his best-known roles in his later years was as the priest who gets pestered by flies in The Amityville Horror (1979); the Latin-American crime lord in The Specialist (1994), opposite Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone; and as an aggressive gung-ho general in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! On television, he appeared in the miniseries Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives (1985), Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993), and a 1995 Columbo TV movie. Among his final feature film roles was as the judge in the Denzel Washington prison drama The Hurricane (1999). The film reunited him with director Norman Jewison, who directed him in In the Heat of the Night and the 1978 Stallone film F.I.S.T.
Steiger also starred in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut's play Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971). In 1969, he appeared in the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man with his then-wife, Claire Bloom. He was offered the title role in Patton, but turned it down because he did not want to glorify war. The role was then given to George C. Scott, who won a Best Actor Oscar. Steiger called this refusal his "dumbest career move." He also tried out for The Godfather.
Steiger has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
Steiger had five wives: actress Sally Gracie (married 1952, divorced 1958), actress Claire Bloom (married 1959, divorced 1969), Sherry Nelson (married 1973, divorced 1979), Paula Ellis (married 1986, divorced 1997), and actress Joan Benedict (married 2000). He had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger (born in 1955) from his marriage to Bloom, and a son by his marriage to Ellis. He had a love affair with Diana Dors after they met during the filming of The Unholy Wife. His last film was A Month of Sundays.
After undergoing triple heart bypass surgery in 1976, Steiger fell into a serious depression for eight years. He died in Los Angeles at the age of 77, of pneumonia and complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California.
According to research at the University of Virginia, using the Internet Movie Database as a guide, Steiger was the best-linked actor in Hollywood history, if one can link two actors if they have ever appeared in a movie together. The average "Steiger number" of a movie actor, meaning the number of links it takes to get from that actor to Steiger, is 2.679. By contrast, the average "Bacon number," the number of links it takes to reach Kevin Bacon (whose linkability is much more famous), is 2.955. Steiger, incidentally, has a Bacon number of 2. See: Small world phenomenon.
