Rod Steiger

Rod Steiger (1925-2002), American actor, born in Westhampton, New York, best known for playing explosive, volatile cowards. After a period in the navy during World War II, he trained at the New York School for Social Research (1945-1947), the New York Theater Wing, and the Actors Studio. From 1950 he began appearing on Broadway, but his reputation was primarily created through live-television drama.

His performance in the television production of Paddy Chayevsky’s Marty (1953) led to him playing the hoodlum brother of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront (1954, directed by Elia Kazan) and to the renowned confrontation between them in the “taxi scene”. It cast the mould and his performances in The Big Knife (1955, directed by Robert Aldrich), Jubal (1956), The Harder They Fall (1956), Run of the Arrow (1957), Al Capone (1959), and Le Mani Sulla Città (1963; Hands Across the City, Francesco Rosi), come close to parodies of it. His most admired part, as the survivor of a Nazi concentration camp in The Pawnbroker (1965, Sidney Lumet), a commercial failure but an artistic success, boosted a flagging career, and films such as Doctor Zhivago (1965, David Lean), In the Heat of the Night (1967, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), the black comedy No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), and Lucky Luciano (1973, Rosi) seemed to confirm that, harnessed by a strong director, he could become one of the greatest of screen actors. Ill health intruded, and later and less important parts, such as that of General Decker in Mars Attacks! (1996, Tim Burton) and of Doc Wallace in Shiloh (1997) offered him less opportunity. Latterly, he also played Father Kovak in End of Days (1999) and a dying grandfather searching for his lost son in A Month of Sundays (2001). His second wife (from 1959 to 1969) was the actress Claire Bloom.