Facts about Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger Biography
Rod Steiger won the 1967 Academy Award for playing a bigoted Mississippi cop opposite Sidney Poitier‘s black Philadelphia cop in the film In the Heat of the Night.
Feisty and sometimes difficult, Steiger was a serious-minded actor in the manner of Marlon Brando and James Dean; like those two, he studied Method acting at the prestigious Actors Studio in New York.
Steiger played Brando’s brother in On the Waterfront, the man to whom Brando utters the famous line, “I coulda been a contender!” Steiger was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role (two of his co-stars from that film were also nominated for best supporting actor — Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden — but the winner that year was Edmund O’Brien for The Barefoot Contessa).
Before his 1967 win, Steiger won an Oscar for his leading role in The Pawnbroker (1964).
Steiger’s other films included Oklahoma! (1955, as the villain Jud Fry), Doctor Zhivago (1965, with Omar Sharif), The Amityville Horror (1979, based on the DeFeo family story) and End of Days (1999, with Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Extra credit
Steiger was married five times: to Sally Gracie, actress Claire Bloom, Sherry Nelson, Paula Ellis and Joan Benedict. He and Bloom had a daughter, Anna, and with Ellis he had a son, Michael Winston… In the Heat of the Night was made into a TV series in 1988, with Carroll O’Connor in Steiger’s role… Steiger turned down the title role in the 1970 film Patton; the role went to George C. Scott, who won an Oscar with it… Steiger played the title role in Marty on TV in 1953; Ernest Borgnine played the role in the subsequent feature film, and also won the Academy Award… Steiger suffered from depression throughout much of the 1980s… At 16 Steiger lied about his age and joined the Navy, in which he served during WWII.
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Something in Common with Rod Steiger
- Actors born in New York (199)