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Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, Waterloo, and Duck, You Sucker!, as well as the television programs Marty and Jesus of Nazareth.
Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger,[1][2] of French, Scottish, and German descent.[3][4] Steiger was raised as a Lutheran.[3][5] He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger's mother (who subsequently left show business).[4] 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 action on destroyers in the Pacific.[6]
Steiger appeared in over 100 motion pictures. He began his acting career in theatre and on live television in the early 1950s. On May 24, 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 have restricted the range of roles Steiger could play and determined the image he portrayed onscreen; those were two things Steiger objected to throughout his career.
He won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Chief of Police Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967) opposite Sidney Poitier. He was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954), in which he played Marlon Brando's character's brother. 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time for Best Actor, for the gritty The Pawnbroker (1965), a Sidney Lumet film in which Steiger portrays an emotionally withdrawn Holocaust survivor living in New York City.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 Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965). Steiger, one of only two Americans 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 his performance would not blend with theirs, but he won acclaim for this role. He also befriended fellow actor Tom Courtenay on this film.[7]
He also appeared in The Big Knife as an unduly aggressive film studio boss who berates film star Jack Palance; as Al Capone in Al Capone (1959); as Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One; as the serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady; as a repressed gay NCO in The Sergeant (1968); and as Rabbi Saunders in The Chosen (1981).
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 of the Desert (1981); W. C. Fields in (1976);W. C. Fields and Me Pontius Pilate in Franco Zeffirelli's TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977); U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman in Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), and mob boss Sam Giancana in the TV miniseries, Sinatra (1992). Steiger appeared in several Italian films, including Hands Over the City (1963) and Lucky Luciano (1974) (both Francesco Rosi's), and also Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker! (1971) starring James Coburn. In France, he starred in Claude Chabrol's Innocents with Dirty Hands opposite Romy Schneider.
In his later years he appeared in The Amityville Horror (1979); The Neighbor (1993), The Specialist (1994), and 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 television film, Strange Bedfellows. Among his final roles was the judge in the prison drama, The Hurricane (1999). The film reunited him with director Norman Jewison, who had directed him in In the Heat of the Night. His last film was Poolhall Junkies (2002).[8]
Steiger also starred in the film version of
In 1985, Steiger performed on Joni Mitchell's album Dog Eat Dog where he provided the voice of an evangelist in the song "Tax Free".
Steiger was married five times: he married actress Sally Gracie (1952–1958),[10] actress Claire Bloom (1959–1969),[10] Sherry Nelson (1973–1979),[10] Paula Ellis (1986–1997)[10] and actress Joan Benedict Steiger (married 2000 until his death).[10] He had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger (born in 1960) by Bloom, and a son, Michael Steiger (born in 1993), from his marriage to Ellis.[10]
Steiger died of pneumonia and complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor on July 9, 2002 in Los Angeles[10] and was buried in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery. The film Saving Shiloh, released in 2006, was dedicated to his memory.
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