Biography
A renowned character actor who never liked that label, Rod Steiger left his mark on 1950s and '60s Hollywood with forceful performances in such critical favorites as
On the Waterfront (1954) and
The Pawnbroker (1964), culminating in an Oscar for
In the Heat of the Night (1967). Despite myriad health problems and less sterling job offers from the 1970s onward, Steiger never stopped acting before he passed away in 2002.
Born on Long Island, Steiger was raised in New Jersey by his mother after his parents divorced. Dropping out of high school at 16, Steiger enlisted in the Navy in 1941, serving on a destroyer in the World War II South Pacific. Returning to New Jersey after his 1945 discharge, Steiger worked at the Veterans Administration and joined a civil service theater group where one of the female members urged him to make acting his career. Along with using his G.I. Bill to study at several New York schools, including the Actors Studio, Steiger began landing roles in live TV plays in 1947. Over the next five years, Steiger honed his formidable Method skills in 250-plus live TV productions, as well as on Broadway. Though he appeared in the movie
Teresa (1951), Steiger didn't fully make the transition to film until his award-winning performance as the lonely title character in the 1953 TV production of
Paddy Chayefsky's
Marty, which helped him nab a part in
Elia Kazan's
On the Waterfront. As Charley Malloy, Steiger most memorably shared the backseat of a cab with screen brother
Marlon Brando as Brando's ex-boxer Terry laid the blame for his one-way trip to Palookaville on his corrupt older sibling. Though Kazan had guided Steiger to his first Oscar nomination, Steiger later condemned the Academy's controversial decision to award Kazan an honorary Oscar in 1999. After
On the Waterfront, Steiger made his presence felt as a movie tycoon in his erstwhile TV director
Robert Aldrich's Hollywood tale
The Big Knife (1955), a scheming attorney in
Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), and (in his professional singing and dancing debut) the villain Jud in
Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of the Broadway musical Oklahoma! (1955). Further underlining his effusive talent and his intense (if occasionally overwrought) screen style, Steiger co-starred with
Humphrey Bogart in Bogart's final film,
The Harder They Fall (1956); survived
Samuel Fuller-style Western sadism as an Irish-accented ex-soldier in
Run of the Arrow (1957); played a psychopath in Cry Terror! (1958); and raged as Al Capone (1959) (Steiger's Capone was later credited as the inadvertent model for
Robert De Niro's performance in
The Untouchables [1987]).
Steiger still occasionally acted on-stage, including
Orson Welles' unusual adaptation of Moby Dick in 1962. Nevertheless, Steiger concentrated mostly on movies, with his career taking on an international flavor after he married his second wife and Broadway co-star,
Claire Bloom, in 1959. After appearing in the low-key British drama
The Mark (1961), Steiger joined the impressive Hollywood all-star cast re-staging of D-Day in the war epic
The Longest Day (1962). He returned to films after his 1962 theater hiatus as a dishonest politico in the Italian film
Le Mani Sulla Città (1963). Rather than a permanent sign of a professional ebb, Steiger's forays into Italian movies preceded two of the best years of his career. In
Sidney Lumet's groundbreaking independent drama
The Pawnbroker, Steiger's powerful performance as a Holocaust survivor running a Harlem pawnshop earned the Berlin Film Festival's Best Actor prize in 1964 and garnered raves upon the film's 1965 U.S. release. That same year, Steiger also gleefully played the asexual embalmer Mr. Joyboy in
Tony Richardson's outrageous comedy
The Loved One (1965) and had a small part in
David Lean's blockbuster romance
Doctor Zhivago (1965). After his banner year resulted in a much-desired Best Actor Oscar nomination for
The Pawnbroker, Steiger lost to
Lee Marvin. The outcome was different for his next American film, the acclaimed racially charged police drama
In the Heat of the Night. Starring opposite
Sidney Poitier, Steiger imbued his bigoted Southern sheriff with enough complexity to make him more than just a cliché redneck, reaching a prickly, believable détente with Poitier's sophisticated Northern detective. Nominated alongside youth cult phenomena
Warren Beatty and
Dustin Hoffman,
Paul Newman's iconic "Cool Hand" Luke, and venerable lion
Spencer Tracy, Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar and closed his acceptance speech by asserting, "We
shall overcome." Though he co-starred with Bloom in two films post-
In the Heat of the Night,
The Illustrated Man (1969) and
Three Into Two Won't Go (1969), they divorced in 1969.
Steiger won critics' hearts again with his bravura performance as a schizoid serial killer in
No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). His antiwar sentiments, however, provoked Steiger to turn down the eponymous World War II general in
Patton (1970); Steiger instead played French emperor Napoleon in the European production depicting his defeat at
Waterloo (1970). In search of good roles, Steiger mostly worked abroad in the early '70s. Though they clashed over Steiger's Method techniques during production, Steiger was excellent as a peasant caught up in the Mexican Revolution in
Sergio Leone's Western Duck, You Sucker! (1972). He also worked with veteran Leone star Gian Maria Volonté in
Francesco Rosi's
Lucky Luciano (1974), and played Benito Mussolini in the The Last Days of Mussolini (1974). His performance in
Claude Chabrol's
Dirty Hands (1975), however, fell prey to his tendency to over-emote. Though he was a superb W.C. Fields in American biopic W.C. Fields and Me (1976), Steiger's Hollywood career had undeniably fallen from his 1950s and '60s heights. He shared the screen with new star
Sylvester Stallone in one of Stallone's early flops, F.I.S.T. (1978), and chewed the haunted house scenery in schlock horror flick
The Amityville Horror (1979). Steiger joined the distinguished cast of the British drama
Lion of the Desert (1981) for his second turn as Il Duce, but the film sat on the shelf for two years before its release; appealing Western
Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981) was buried by its distributor. Steiger was back in peak form as a Hasidic rabbi in the film version of
The Chosen (1981), but that did little to stop Steiger's slide into TV movies and such B-horror pictures as
The Kindred (1987) and
American Gothic (1987) in the 1980s. Steiger's career problems were exacerbated by health difficulties, as he was forced to undergo open-heart surgery in 1976 and 1980. With producers wary of hiring him, and his third marriage ending in 1979, Steiger suffered debilitating bouts of depression in the late '70s and mid-'80s.
Nevertheless, Steiger continued to work into the 1990s. Crediting his fourth wife, Paula Ellis, with keeping him sane, Steiger weathered his disappointment with The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991), and took pleasure in appearing as "himself" in
Robert Altman's acclaimed Hollywood evisceration
The Player (1992) as well as playing Sam Giancana in the TV biopic
Sinatra (1992). While he mostly worked in TV, Steiger turned up in small yet memorable feature roles as a Mafia capo in
The Specialist (1994), a loony Army commander in Mars Attacks! (1996), a judge in
The Hurricane (1999), and a bombastic priest in
End of Days (1999). His final film, the indie drama
Poolhall Junkies (2002) with
Christopher Walken, was slated for release the same year he was one of the indie-friendly actors dining on
Jon Favreau's IFC talk show
Dinner for Five. Steiger passed away from pneumonia and kidney failure on July 9, 2002. He was survived by his fifth wife, his daughter with Bloom, and his son with Ellis. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide