Rod Steiger

Movie Actor

Rod Steiger was born in New York City, New York, United States on April 14th, 1925 and is the Movie Actor. At the age of 77, Rod Steiger biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, movies, and networth are available.

  Report
Date of Birth
April 14, 1925
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
New York City, New York, United States
Death Date
Jul 9, 2002 (age 77)
Zodiac Sign
Aries
Networth
$8 Million
Profession
Actor, Film Actor, Stage Actor, Television Actor
Rod Steiger Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 77 years old, Rod Steiger physical status not available right now. We will update Rod Steiger's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Height
Not Available
Weight
Not Available
Hair Color
Not Available
Eye Color
Not Available
Build
Not Available
Measurements
Not Available
Rod Steiger Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
Not Available
Education
Not Available
Rod Steiger Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Not Available
Children
Not Available
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
Not Available
Rod Steiger Life

Rodney Stephen Steiger (April 14, 1925-2002) was an American actor best known for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile, and crazed characters.

He is described as "one of Hollywood's most charismatic and dynamic actors" by virtue of his method acting, portraying the roles he played, which sometimes resulted in clashes with directors and co-stars.

In On the Waterfront (1954), he starred in On the Waterfront (1954), the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker (1964), and as police chief Bill Gillespie opposite Sidney Poitier in the film In the Heat of the Night (1967), which earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Steiger, the son of a vaudevillian, was born in Westhampton, New York.

He had a difficult childhood, with an alcoholic mother from whom he ran away at the age of 16.

He began his acting career in the South Pacific theater during WWII and went on to receive critical acclaim for his portrayal of the main character in the teleplay "Marty" (1953).

In a performance of Curse you, Jack Dalton, he made his stage debut in 1946. He appeared in productions including An Enemy of the People (1950), Clifford Odets' Night Music (1951), Seagulls Over Sorrento (1952) and Rashomon (1959). Steiger made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa in 1951 and appeared in films including The Big Knife (1955), Oklahoma! (1955) Across the Bridge (1957) and Al Capone (1959) Across the Bridge (1957) and George Lopez (1959).

Early life and acting background

Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, on April 14, 1925, the only child of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger of French, Scottish, and German descent. Rod was raised as a Lutheran. He never knew his father, a vainnellillian who was a part of Steiger's mother's travelling song-and-dance crew, but was told that he was a charming Latino-looking guy, who was a natural performer and dancer. Tom Hutchinson's biography describes him as a "shadowy, fugitive figure" who "honted" Rod throughout his life and was a "invisible presence and unseen authority."

Steiger's mother, Hutchinson, was described as "plump, lively, and small, with long auburn hair." She had a natural singing voice and almost became a Hollywood actress, but she gave up acting and moved to alcohol after a leg injury permanently hampered her walking ability. As a result, she stopped doing show business and moved away from Westhampton to raise her son. They travelled through several towns, including Irvington and Bloomfield, before settling in Newark, New Jersey. Steiger's alcoholism brought him a lot of shame, and the family was often mocked by other children and their parents within the neighborhood. He was sexually assaulted by a pedophile who lured him into a butterfly exhibit at the age of five. Steiger wrote about his unhappy family history: "If you had the opportunity of having the childhood you loved, with your alcoholic mother, and being the most popular actor in the world today, which would you choose?" In a New York minute, a loving, secure childhood is born. Steiger's mother stayed sober for the last 11 years of her life and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on a weekly basis. Steiger recalled: "I was so proud of her." She turned herself around. She came alive once more.

Steiger became popular as "The Rock" during his youth, as a result of his immense size and mass. Despite being mocked for his mother's alcoholism, he was a popular figure at school and a good softball player. During his adolescence years, he showed an interest in writing poetry and acting, and he appeared in many school plays while attending West Side High School in Newark. He ran away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, after being tired of fighting with his mother.

He enlisted on May 11, 1942, and received his education at the United States. The Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island, was on display at the Naval Training Station. He joined the newly assigned USS Taussig (DD-746) on May 20, 1944. When serving as a destroyer torpedomen, he saw battle in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Iwo Jima. "I loved the Navy," Steiger later wrote. I was foolish enough to believe I was doing something heroic." His experiences during the war haunted him for the remainder of his life, especially the death of Americans during the Battle of Iwo Jima, as well as the sinking of vessels by the Taussig that were known to carry women and children. Steiger and the Taussig in the Philippines sustained a powerful typhoon, Halsey's Typhoon, with winds up to one hundred knots (115 mph) and 80 foot (24 m) waves on December 17, 1944. As a result, three US destroyers were lost, but the Taussig survived, with Steiger tieding a rope to himself on deck and flattening himself as waves engulfed the ship.

The GI Bill paid for his rent at a West 81st Street in New York City, earning less than $100 a month and four years of teaching. He started by oiling machines and washing floors. He chose to enroll in a drama class primarily because of its acceptance of attractive young women. It was administered by the Office of Dependencies and Beneficiaries, where he was employed at the time. He then started a two-year course at the New School for Social Research, directed by German émigré Erwin Piscator. Steiger was cast after barely speaking a few words at one point, according to the producer, who said he had a "fresh, brilliant quality" during one audition. Walter Matthau, a high-achieving student at the time, named the school "The Neurotic School for Sexual Research," referred to it as "The Neurotic School for Sexual Research." Steiger was shocked to learn that he was destined to be a performer, and he was encouraged to continue studying at the Dramatic Workshop. One of the main reasons he wanted to be an actor was to regain public confidence for his family name, which had previously been so humiliating for him as an actor. Another significant determinant was his conviction that he did not "have the energy for a regular job" and would have ended up as a depressed, violent alcoholic. Paul Muni, his sole role model as an actor, thought was "the greatest" but he also had a great admiration for French actor Harry Baur and, "to the point of adoration," he said.

Personal life

Steiger married actress Sally Gracie (1952–1958), actor Claire Bloom (1959–1979), secretary Sherry Nelson (1973–1979), and actor Joan Benedict Steiger (married 2000 until his death). Anna Steiger, the opera singer who was born in 1960, was born by Bloom, and Michael Steiger (born in 1993), who was assigned to Ellis from his marriage to Ellis. Steiger said in an interview with journalist Kenneth Passingham, that Bloom was "all I ever wanted in a woman" and that "maybe our marriage was better than most because we were both established when we met." The couple bought a house in Malibu, California, a neighborhood that appealed to Steiger but Bloom found boring. They also bought an apartment in Manhattan and a cottage in County Galway, which is within close proximity to John Huston's home. Steiger was forced to sell their New York apartment in the mid-1970s due to financial constraints. When his relationship with Bloom came to an end in 1969, he was deeply distraught. Hillard Elkins remarried in the same year, a woman Steiger had entrusted to care for her while he was away shooting Waterloo. Steiger was also close friends with actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Steiger was outspoken on McCarthyism. Charlton Heston's stance on weapons was particularly scathing, and he referred to him as "America's favorite fascist." Steiger said he was shocked that the American Film Institute hadn't honoured Elia Kazan because of his testimony to the Un-American Activities Committee in a Los Angeles Times column. Steiger said he was "appalled, appalled, appalled" at actors and writers who had been compelled to drive cabs because they had been blacklisted and had even committed suicide as a result. Heston did not reply.

Steiger suffered from depression for a large part of his life. Just over eight years of clinical depression, he said, before his Oscar win for In The Heat of the Night. Health conditions often exacerbated his work difficulties from the 1970s to the present. He underwent open-heart surgery in 1976 and again in 1979, but obesity was a problem, although certain roles, such as Napoleon, did force him to gain weight. After the decline of his third marriage in 1979, a deep depression, partially a result of his surgery, sadly harmed his career during the 1980s. During this period, he became more reclusive, often confining himself to his apartment, and enjoyed American football for many hours. "You begin to lose self-confidence," he said of the experience. You don't walk, you don't shave, and if no one was watching you, you'd go to the toilet right where you were sitting." "You'll never act again" is the message he'd be laying in bed at night.

Why bother?

You're no good." Despite these difficulties, Steiger maintained his efforts into the 1990s and early 2000s. He said in one of his final interviews that there was a stigma incorrectly attached to sufferers of depression and that it was a chemical imbalance rather than a mental disorder. "Pain must never be a point of shame," he said. It's a part of life, it's a part of humanity."

Steiger died of pneumonia and kidney failure at the age of 77 as a result of a gall bladder tumor transplant in a Westside hospital in Los Angeles on July 9, 2002. In Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery – he was buried. Saving Shiloh, which was released in 2006, was dedicated to his memory.

Source

Rod Steiger Career

Career

Jack Dalton, Curse you, the actor, made his stage debut in a production called Curse You. (1946) at the Civic Repertory Theatre of Newark. He was invited by Daniel Mann, one of his teachers, to attend the Actors Studio, which was established by Elia Kazan in October 1947. He studied method acting, which became deeply embedded in him, alongside Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Eli Wallach. Unlike Malden and Wallach, the lack of a matinée idol began to work as a character actor rather than a leading man. Steiger's stage appearances continued in 1950, with a minor role as a townperson in a major production of An Enemy of the People at the Music Box Theatre. In Clifford Odets' production of Night Music (1951), where he appeared in A. L. Rosenberger's first major role on Broadway, he appeared on Broadway. At the ANTA Playhouse, the performance was held. He appeared as a telegraphist in the film Seagulls Over Sorrento the following year, and appeared at the John Golden Theatre beginning on September 11, 1952.

Steiger's early days, although minor, were significant, especially in television series during the 1950s, when he appeared in more than 250 live television shows during a five-year period. Fred Coe, NBC's program manager, was first spotted by him, who increasingly gave him more roles. Steiger considered television to be what repertory theatre had been for a while, and thought it would be a place where he could put his abilities to the test in a slew of roles. Steiger's response soon afterward had garnered praise from critics like John Crosby, who noted that the actor had consistently delivered "effortless convincing performances." Danger (1950–53), Lux Video Theatre (1951), Out There (1951), The Gulf Playhouse (1953), and Shakespeare's Romeo (1954) episode of You Are There (1955), among Steiger's credits include "The First Command Performance of Romeo and Juliet (1954), under director Sidney Lumet (1953). He continued to appear in various playhouse television productions, including in five episodes of Kraft Theatre (1952–54), earning him acclaim from critics, six episodes of The Philco Television Playhouse (1951–55), and two episodes of Schlitz Playhouse of Acts (1957–58). Steiger made his big screen debut in 1953, but he had a small role in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa, shot in 1951. Steiger, who referred to himself as "cocky," triumphed over Zinnemann by praising his course. Steiger was "very popular, incredibly articulate, and full of amazing memories," Zinnemann told, and the two remained extremely respectful of each other throughout life.

Steiger appeared in Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" episode of the Goodyear Television Playhouse on May 24, 1953. Martin Ritt, the original intended role for the role, later became a producer. The tale of a lonely and homely butcher from the Bronx in search of love is called "Marty." The play was a critical success that increased Steiger's public knowledge; Tom Stempel said he brought "striking energy to his role as Marty, particularly in giving us Marty's pain." In the film Marty (1955), which received the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Actor Oscar for Borgnine, Steiger refused to commit to a seven-year studio contract, he was replaced with Ernest Borgnine. 1956 was Steiger's breakthrough year, earning Sylvania Awards for Marty and four other outstanding performances of the year, including a gangster Dutch Schultz in two episodes of You Are There, as a gangster Dutch Schultz in a thriller and as a radar operator in My Brother's Keeper.

Steiger was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Charley "the Gent," the brother of Marlon Brando's character in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront (1954). Leo Braudy, a film critic, said that the "incessantly repeated photos of its taxicab fight between Brando and Rod Steiger have made the film legendary." Despite Brando fuelling the common belief in his autobiography that the scene had been improvised, the taxicab scene took eleven hours to shoot and was heavily scripted. Brando said that seven takes were required because Steiger couldn't stop screaming, which Steiger found to be unjustified and inaccurate. Despite having a great deal of admiration for Brando as an actor, Steiger disliked him as a person and complained frequently during Brando's "preference for leaving the set" shortly after shooting his scenes. Later, Steiger said, "We didn't get to know each other at all." He always travelled solo, but I haven't seen him since the movie. I do resent him saying he's just a hooker, and that actors are whores." Steiger also reacted angrily when he learned that Kazan had been given an honorary Oscar by the Academy in 1999. Steiger said in a 1999 interview with BBC News that he probably would not have done On the Waterfront if he had known that Kazan provided the House Un-American Activities Committee with names of artists suspected of being Communists.

In the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma, Jud Fry played Jud Fry. (1955), in which he performed his own singing. It was one of the largest location film shoots of the 1950s, shooting near Nogales, Arizona, with a crew of 325 people and some 70 trucks. Steiger portrayed a "complexity to the character that went far beyond the stock musical villain" in a television show called "Trinity to Jud." Steiger said James Dean, who auditioned for the role that went to Gordon MacRae, was a "good kid absorbed by his own ego, to the point that it was destroying him" in his role, which he believed contributed to his death. Dean allegedly gave Steiger his prized copy of Ernest Hemingway's book Death in the Afternoon, and had underlined every appearance of the word "death."

Steiger appeared in Columbia boss Harry Cohn's film noir The Big Knife, a slew of obnoxious film tycoon. Steiger dyed his hair for the role, read a book about the Treblinka extermination camp to learn more about his character, read a book about the Treblinka extermination camp to learn about his character extensively, and visited a Beverly Hills, California, to find out why his character has contempt for women. Steiger and Palance did not get along during the shoot, and Palance threw several record albums at Steiger in one scene, suspecting that he was attempting to steal the scene. Steiger's involvement as a prosecutor major in Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, alongside Gary Cooper and Charles Bickford, earned critical acclaim later this year.

In Columbia Pictures' western, Jubal (1956), co-starring Glenn Ford and Ernest Borgnine, Steiger portrayed the character "Pinky" in "British, Jubal (1956). Steiger's character is that of a rancher, a "sneering baddie" who becomes jealous as his ex mistress is attracted to Ford's story. Steiger's deep dedication to method acting during development made him a "good actor but a strange guy," Ford explained. Steiger disliked the situation and often clashed with director Delmer Daves, who was more sympathetic to Ford's lighthearted interpretation of the film. A writer for Variety was captivated by the character's "evil venom" on its debut in April 1956, and he regretted that there hadn't been as "hatful" as a screen heavy for a long time.

Steiger played a crooked boxing promoter who recruits a sports journalist (Humphrey Bogart in his last role). During filming, Steiger referred to Bogart as "a genius" who had "tremendous authority."

In 1957, Steiger appeared in three films that were not released. The first was John Farrow's film noir The Unholy Wife, in which he played a wealthy Napa Valley vintner marries a femme fatale named Phyllis (Diana Dors). The New York Times' original review of the film said Steiger's appearance was "curious," describing that the actor's voice modulation "variates from Marlon Brando to Ronald Colman and back." Steiger suffered a serious ankle injury before shooting one of the battle scenes and was unable to walk, let alone run during Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow, in which he played a confederate soldier who refuses to accept defeat following General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox at the end of the American Civil War. Instead of using close-ups, the fuller had one of the Native American extras run in Steiger's location, which is why the picture was shot just the feet rather than using close-ups. Steiger had studied the history of the film and decided to portray the character as an Irishman, becoming "the first Irish cowboy" as he put it. Steiger played a German conman with British citizenship who goes into hiding in Mexico after embezzling company funds later this year. Steiger gave "one of his finest appearances," film critic Dennis Schwartz said.

In Andrew L. Stone's Cry Terror, Steiger portrayed a mastermind criminal attempting to obtain a $500,000 ransom, opposite James Mason and Inger Stevens. (1958) for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Steiger's "very laconic," according to Paul Beckley of the Herald Tribune, but Dennis Schwartz dismissed it as "an ill-conceived effort" with "too many coincidences and contrived plot points to hold attention." Steiger appeared in Fay and Michael Kanin's 1950 film Rashomon, where he portrayed the bandit originally played by Toshiro Mifune. It was praised by journalists and nominated for three Tony awards, making it a huge success. Steiger's performance was described as "magnificently animalish," according to Robert Coleman of the Daily Mirror, while Kenneth Tynan of The New Yorker believes the actor set new Broadway standards. In the same year, Steiger portrayed legendary mobster Al Capone in the film of the same name. Steiger was keen on demonstrating Capone's showiness, slinging a camel-hair coat over his shoulders, and wearing his hat at a jaunty angle. Steiger was named in the Best Male Dramatic Performance award for its deglamorized portrayal of the subject. Though Hutchinson, author of Rod Steiger: Memoirs of a Love, considers Steiger's portrayal of Capone to be more of a caricature, George Anastasia and Glen Macnow, authors of the book The Ultimate Book of Gangster Movies, described it as one of Capone's finest screen representations of Capone.

In the Henry Hathaway heist film Seven Thieves (1960), Steiger portrayed sophisticated thief Paul Mason, who masterminds a caper to steal $4 million in French francs from the casino of Monte Carlo's underground vault. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times gave a glowing review of the film, lauding the "nervely delicate plot" and "most intricate characters" of Steiger and his co-star Edward G. Robinson. In The Mark's first year, he took the role of a prison psychiatrist who works to eliminate Stuart Whitman's psychological demons. Steiger's performance was so convincing that, after the film was released, he got a call from a psychiatric hospital asking him to attend one of their board meetings. Nadja Tiller appeared in World in My Pocket's European film production. During this period, Steiger appeared in films in Italy and France. Not only did he believe he had greater fame and esteem as an actor in Europe, but he also approved the more flexible filming schedule that was in place at the time.

In 1962, Steiger appeared in Broadway at Moby Dick—Rehearsed, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, as well as playing a detective looking for a scientist's (Alan Ladd's) mugger in Philip Leacock's 13 West Street for Columbia Pictures. In the large ensemble cast of The Longest Day, starring John Wayne, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, and Henry Fonda, Steiger played a small role as a destroyer commander. Steiger had privately revealed to him that he was in financial debt at the time and underwent a facelift, which Burton said made him look like "one half of a naked ass-hole." In Francesco Rosi's Italian production, Hands over the City (1963), Steiger played ruthless Neapolitan land developer and city councilman Edoardo Nottola, who uses his political power to achieve personal gain in a large suburban real estate transaction. Rosi had cast Steiger in the Italian language film because he had needed "a rich interpreter of great ability" in the role of the land developer, according to biographer Francesco Bolzoni.

Steiger agreed to appear in Time of Indifference (1964), in which he appeared alongside Claudia Cardinale and Shelley Winters, shortly after Hands over the City. Despite Steiger's witty appearance, the film was marred by a feud between director Francesco Maselli and producer Franco Cristaldi, with one wanting it to be purely political and the other wanting to emphasize the sexual subplot and his relationship with Cardinale. Steiger starred in Sidney Lumet's gritty drama The Pawnbroker (1964) as an embittered, emotionally removed survivor of the Holocaust in New York City. Steiger's career was waning at the time, and he had to "scramble for paying gigs for a decade" before being granted this role, according to Richard Harland Smith of TCM. Steiger agreed to a reduced price of $50,000. He read Edward Lewis Wallant's book and script several times to gain an intimate knowledge of the character, and argued against reducing his lines to make his characters more accurate and alienated from society. "Yes, Rod has rhetorical flaws, but you can discuss them through with him," Lumet said during the production. This solitary Jew could not reach new heights of emotion, as he had been battered by life and by people. Because God had betrayed him, the faith he had to find was in other people.'

"I think my best work is in The Pawnbroker," Steiger said of the film. The boy is discovered dead on the street in the last scene. "I think that, whatever it may be, with my talent, this is the best time to be," says the author. He drew inspiration for this climactic scene, in which he seems to express his indignation through a scream of Picasso's "Guernica," which depicts war-ravaged villagers. Steiger's character, according to Cecil Wilson of the Daily Mail, "seems to cover all the agony ever inflicted on man." Despite the film's controversy and accusations of anti-Semitism, Steiger's reputation earned him the award for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival and his second Best Actor nomination at the Oscars. Steiger was positive he had put on an Oscar-winning showing, but he was shocked when he lost to Lee Marvin.

Steiger was an effeminate embalmer in Tony Richardson's comedy The Loved One, which was based on Evelyn Waugh's 1948 short satirical book. His curly-haired appearance in the film was based on a bust of Apollo that he once saw when meeting Richardson. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, who found his character repellent, was offended by Steiger's defamation. Komarovsky, a Russian politician and "villainous opportunist" who rapes Julie Christie's character in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965), was one of his favorite characters. Steiger, one of only two Americans in the cast, was initially unsure about working with such talented British actors as Ralph Richardson and Alec Guinness, but was relieved to learn that he did not stand out as an American. The film was the biggest international box office draw of the 1960s, grossing $200 million worldwide. It has since been named one of the best American films ever made, and the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies list selected it as the 39th best American film in the original AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998.

Steiger had intended returning to the stage, and had agreed to appear in Bertolt Brecht's Galileo as the title character in Bertolt Brecht's Galileo in April 1967, but the performance was cancelled due to illness. He was looking for a killer in a Southern police chief. Virgil Tibbs (Poitier), an African-American man walking through town after discovering his mother, who later turns out to be a veteran homicide detective from Philadelphia, is condemned against blacks. As Steiger's Gillespie learns to revere the black man who he first believed him to be a criminal, the film examines how the two men communicate and band together in solving the murder. Steiger drew on his Navy service with the name "King," referring to his accent. Poitier rated Steiger and Spencer Tracy as the finest actors he had ever worked with, remarking in 1995, "He's so good he made me dig into bags I never knew I had." "Steiger's transformation from a devoted Dixie bigot to a man who learns to love Poitier stands out in contrast to the strolling version of the murder." Steiger has received a number of other awards, including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, a Laurel Award, and New York Film Critics Circle awards for Best Actor.

In Jack Smight's black comedy thriller No Way to Treat a Lady, he played a serial killer opposite George Segal in 1968. During the film, he adopts many disguises, including those of an Irish priest, a German plumber, and a gay hairdresser, in an attempt to keep his victims anonymous and put their victims at ease before strangling them and painting garish red lipstick on their foreheads. Steiger's "inhibited debut as a hammy" was critically praised by critics, and Time Out's Vincent Canby highlighted him as "brilliant as a son of a great actress who has left her child with a mother fixation."

In John Flynn's The Sergeant of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Steiger played a repressed gay non-commissioned officer opposite John Phillip Law, earning him the David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actor in 1968. Despite winning the award, film critic Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was particularly critical of Steiger's casting as a gay man and felt he was "completely out of his range" — which Steiger dismissed as ineffective.

In the science fiction film The Illustrated Man (1969), Steiger was depicted as a short-tempered tattooed man with Claire Bloom, soon-to-be ex-wife. The film was a critical and commercial failure, and Ray Bradbury, the screenwriter, said, "Rod was really good in it, but it wasn't a good film... the script was horrible." Steiger had a great deal with Bloom in Peter Hall's British drama Three Won't Go, portraying an Irishman who cheats on his wife with a young hiker. In 1969, it was accepted into the Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the 19th most popular film at the UK box office.

Steiger was given the role in Patton (1970), but he turned down because he didn't want to glorify war. George C. Scott, who received the Best Actor Award for his work, was given the role. "I got on my high horse," Steiger remarking on his decision "it was the dumbest career move" he made. "I thought I was a pacifist." In comparison, he portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte opposite Christopher Plummer in Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo (1970), a joint venture between the Soviet Union and Italy. "I watched with admiration, no, that is not the right word, with a sprightly smile, the role of Napoleon in Waterloo," Anatoly Efros wrote, though literary critic Daniel S. Burt's Steiger's Napoleonic interpretation is less convincing than Plummer's Wellington.

Steiger appeared in Mark Robson's Happy Birthday, Wanda June, before deciding to star alongside Juan Miranda in Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker, which was alternatively titled A Fistful of Dynamite. Leone was initially dissatisfied with his portrayal in that he portrayed his role as a serious, Zapata figure. As a result, tensions between Steiger and Leone grew, with one case that culminated in Steiger walking away during the filming of Juan's stagecoach's abduction. Leone and Steiger were happy with the final result, and Steiger praised Leone for his work as a director. Steiger auditioned for the role of Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), a film version of Italian American author Mario Puzo's 1969 book of the same name, but Puzo felt that Steiger was too old for the role and dismissed him.

In Lolly-Madonna XX (1973), where Steiger played a rural Tennessee patriarch and brother of Jeff Bridges, who was at odds with Robert Ryan's portrayal of him. In Duccio Tessari's Italian war comedy The Heroes, he played turban-wearing German officer Guenther von Lutz, opposite Rod Taylor, and Eugenio Giannini appeared in Eugenio Giannini opposite Gian Maria Volonté's Lucky Luciano later this year.

In Carlo Lizzani's Last Days of Mussolini, which received a positive critical reception in 1975, Steiger portrayed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He appeared in Claude Chabrol's French film Innocents with Dirty Hands, playing Louis Wormser, Romy Schneider's wealthy alcoholic husband. Critics were critical of it, but Steiger discovered the director, whom he had adored, with a bitter disappointment. Chabrol's inability and aloofness from the production had him concerned, as well as his preference for playing chess on set rather than talking through scenes. "The performances are of a piece—uniformly atrocious," Vincent Canby of The New York Times described it as "less than a soap opera." Mr. Steiger's lumbering consumption outnumbers his previous records. He (1) becomes inebriated, (2) whines, (3) pleas for understanding, (4) weeps, and (5) goes to bed alone within his first few minutes on film. Steiger starred in Don Sharp's British thriller Hennessy later this year as an Irish Republican army terrorist who intends to destabilize the Houses of Parliament. "This fellow Hennessy, as played by Rod Steiger, is about as interesting and likable as a Guy Fawkes dummy," New York Magazine's John Simon said.

In an Arthur Hiller biopic, W. C. Fields and Me for Universal Pictures, Steiger portrayed the comedic actor W. C. Fields. Bob Merrill wrote the screenplay, which was based on a memoir by Carlotta Monti, Fields' mistress for the last 14 years of his life. Steiger spent time researching Fields as a result of his job and personal life, as well as developing an encyclopaedic understanding of his career and personal life. He figured that his portrayal of The Bank Dick (1940) would be based on his career. Monti, Fields' mistress, appeared on camera for one day and watched the scene in which he briefly thanked everyone. He burst into tears after Monti met him after the crime and fondly described him as "Woody, Woody, My Woody," a word used solely by those very close to Fields. Despite the emotion Steiger put into the film, critics didn't seem to be terribly taken seriously by the actor's earlier films. Canby characterized Fields' portrayal as a "wax dummy of a woman" and called it "dreadful." Later this month, Lucia Bozzola of The New York Times referred to Steiger's portrayal of Fields as "superb," but she also stated that his Hollywood career had "undeniably decreased from his 1950s and 1960s peak."

In Franco Zeffirelli's TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Steiger played Pontius Pilate. Stacy Keach, a Barabbas, expressed excitement at the opportunity to work with Steiger, describing him as "generous and opinionated." Steiger appeared as a senator in Norman Jewison's F.I.T., opposite Sylvester Stallone, who appeared in the Federation of Inter-State Truckers' labor union leadership. Love and Bullets, a mafia boss, was poorly received by audiences; Roger Ebert dismissed it as a "hopelessly confused hodgepodge of chases, murders, enigmatic meetings, and divorces, and Steiger's effect was alternating with sympathetically rendered scenes from [Charles] Bronson's "severely confused hodgepodgepodgepodgepodgepodgepodge of chases, murders, tragically confused scenes, In Andrew V. McLaglen's war film Breakthrough, set on the Western Front, Steiger was cast as a general opposite Richard Burton and Robert Mitchum. Steiger appeared as a befuddled priest in The Amityville Horror (1979), who is invited to perform an exorcism in a haunted house. Steiger was accused of overacting once more, according to Janet Maslin of The New York Times: "Mr. Steiger bellows and screams and overdoes absolutely everything." He won't even pick up the phone until it's rung 12 or 15 times." Steiger's "spiritual agony was sufficient to shatter the camera lens," Pauline Kael said.

Steiger received two Genie Awards for his work in Klondike Fever and The Lucky Star, both Canadian productions in 1980. In 1898, Klondike Fever was based on Jack London's ride from San Francisco to the Klondike gold fields. Steiger revisited his role as Mussolini in Lion of the Desert, a film that was co-financed by Muammar Gaddafi and which co-starred Anthony Quinn as Bedouin tribal leader Omar Mukhtar, fighting the Italian army in the years leading up to World War II. The Italian authorities reportedly banned the film in 1982, because it was deemed offensive to the army, but it wasn't on Italian television until Gaddafi's state visit in 2009. It received critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, where it was lauded in particular for the quality of its battle scenes. In 1981, Steiger received the Grand Prize for Best Actor for his portrayal of white-bearded Orthodox rabbi Reb Saunders in Jeremy Kagan's The Chosen. Janet Maslin said that Steiger's "slow, rolling delivery" was more "numbing than prepossessing," although a Variety writer called it a "extraordinary performance as the somewhat tyrannical but loving patriarch."

Steiger's career was often influenced by his open-heart surgery in 1979, clinical depression, and illnesses during the 1980s, and he often turned to B-movies, low-budget, independent productions, and TV miniseries. He admitted that during this time he accepted "everything" and knew that some of the films he appeared in were not good, but wanted to show his strong work ethic amid his health issues. He regretted the poorer films in which he appeared in the 1980s and wished he had more stage work. When he wasn't involved in acting, he fell into deeper depression, but it bothered him more that his acting career had taken a turn for the worse and wasn't any longer difficult. He was worried about his failures and regarded him as a liability, according to the major studio developers. When giving advice to a younger colleague, Steiger shared the following: "Never tell anyone if you have heart problems, kid." Never." His reputation as a class actor remained intact, and Joel Hirschhorn at the time considered his gift to be "as good as ever."

In Bryan Forbes' The Naked Face, Steiger starred as a detective sent to investigate the murder of a Chicago psychoanalyst (Roger Moore), a man he detests from a previous lawsuit. It was described by Chicago Tribune writer Richard Christiansen as a "wimpy suspense movie shot in Chicago in 1983" and that Steiger was "acting in his high hysteria gear," "snarls, whines, and overacts." Steiger took a break from cinema in the mid-1980s, when he appeared in the Yorkshire Television mini-series The Glory Boys (1984) with Anthony Perkins (1984) and Hollywood Wives (1985) with Angie Dickinson. During the making of The Glory Boys, Steiger and Perkins were at loggerheads. Perkins resented the fact that Steiger insisted on a bigger trailer and felt that Steiger was attempting to rob scenes from him, while Steiger's performance was "so jittery and jinxed by the chemicals he was using." Steiger said he regretted Perkins' decision that he was hurting the film's success, but Steiger said he felt sorry for him and thought that it was jeopardizing the film Steiger appeared on Joni Mitchell's 1985 album Dog Eat Dog, where he portrayed an evangelist in the song "Tax Free."

Steiger appeared in Catch the Heat (1987), a Brazilian drug baroness who smuggles drugs into the United States through her breast implants, a Argentine-American film. It was pulled from circulation within a week of being announced, according to director Fred Olen Ray. In John Hough's horror film American Gothic, Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo played a frightening elderly couple with developmental delayed children. "Mr. Steiger appears on the camera as if he were reciting Shakespeare, he is clearly, ridiculously bad," the critics wrote. He played authority figures, including a mayor in The January Man and Tennessee Waltz, for the last year of the decade. Despite Steiger's admission that his role in The January Man was "way over the top," the actor enjoyed the experience, bringing a positive turning point after a period of clinical depression.

Steiger appeared in Men of Respect, a crime drama film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, in 1990. Mike Battaglia (Macbeth), who plays a Mafia hitman who makes his way to the top by destroying Steiger's portrayal, played a character based on King Duncan opposite John Turturro (Macbeth). The film was critically panned, with Roger Ebert awarding it one star out of four, referring to the concept as a "very bad idea." Sam Giancana, two years ago in the miniseries Sinatra (1992), Steiger appeared in another mobster, Sam Giancana (1992).

In the macabre Merchant Ivory film production The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991), starring Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine, Steiger portrayed a reverend living in a small town in the American South. Despite being entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival, the film received mainly critical feedback. In Ron Howard's Far and Away, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Steiger auditioned for the role of an elderly Irishman. Howard had Steiger, who had long been bald, to wear a wig to the audition. Howard resentment at his insistence on taping the audition, which he saw as a form of humiliation for actors and actresses, as well as after-dinner entertainment for the Hollywood executives. Steiger never defended Howard, whom he referred to as a "cocksucker" for refusing his role and giving it to Cyril Cusack.

In 1993, Steiger portrayed an elderly gynaecologist who terrorizes his urban neighbors in a rural neighborhood in Burlington, Vermont, The Neighbor. Dennis Schwartz regarded it as one of Steiger's scariest performances, but he believed that the poor script made the role uncomfortable and "mildly entertaining" in the sense that Steiger is expected to carry the film and hams it up. Steiger pleaded guilty to play a Cuban mob boss opposite Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone in Luis Llosa's thriller The Specialist, citing the need as a "$40 million commercial" to alert a new generation that he existed. Critics applauded the film, which has a four percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of July 2015. Steiger received a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor, and the film was listed in The Official Razzie Movie Guide as one of the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made."

Steiger appeared in Tom Clancy's Op Center (1995), a film that was cut down into a TV miniseries and appeared in a Columbo television film, Strange Bedfellows, (1994). In the Dale Rosenbloom family drama Shiloh, he played a small role as Doc Wallace for a year. He reprised the role three years later in the sequel. In addition, Steiger played a "jingoistic top general" who "demands the president go nuclear in the midst of a global crisis."

Steiger portrayed Tony Vago, the mob boss of Vincent Gallo's character in Kiefer Sutherland's Truth or Consequences, a gritty noir about a drug heist gone wrong in 1997. In Antonio Banderas' comedy-drama Crazy in Alabama and in the prison drama The Hurricane, the former middleweight boxer Rubin Carter, who was incorrectly found guilty of a triple murder in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey, was wrongly charged. With Norman Jewison, who had commanded him in In the Heat of the Night, the Hurricane brought Steiger and Jewison together. H. Lee Sarokin, the judge who convicted Carter of freeing Carter, was depicted by Steiger. Sarokin thought it was a "marvelous film" that was Oscar-worthy, but Sarokin found Steiger's portrayal as overtaught and pompous."

Steiger, who played a minor role in End of Days (1999), a film about a washed-up veteran producer (Reynolds) who tries to re-enter the film industry by directing a new film, was one of Burt Reynolds' The Last Producer (2000), a film about a failed-up veteran producer (Reynolds) who tries to re-enter the film business. In Poolhall Junkies (2002), Steiger's last film role was as the billiard hall manager, Nick; critics dismissed it.

Source

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid actor Charles Dierkop died at the age of 87: The star of The Sting and actress Dorothy Burke appeared on TV's Police Woman

www.dailymail.co.uk, February 27, 2024
Charles Dierkop, the actor who played Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, has died at the age of 87. The Hollywood veteran, who is also known for his role in The Sting and Police Woman, died on Sunday. His daughter Lynne tells The Hollywood Reporter that he died as a result of a heart attack and a bout of pneumonia. Charles died at Sherman Oaks Hospital, California, according to the paper. Born Charles Richard Dierkop in 1936 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the actor appeared alongside Rod Steiger in 1964's The Pawnbroker and as a gangster in the 1967 mob film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Charles landed the part of outlaw George 'Flat Nose' Curry in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, alongside Paul Newman and Robert Redford, who appeared in the film's titular gunslingers. In 1961's The Hustler, he appeared alongside Newman, and again on the 1973 con artist masterpiece The Sting, in which Charles played bodyguard Floyd.

The 100 greatest classic films ever and where you can watch them right now: Veteran critic BRIAN VINER'S movies everyone should see at least once - and they don't include Marvel, Shawshank Redemption or Titanic

www.dailymail.co.uk, February 10, 2024
Here are 100 films that I believe every person should see at least once in their lifetime, and all of them should make you laugh, cry, gasp, or think. In some instances, perhaps all four are present. I hope my list would bring you some good cinematic treats, or better still, introduce you to them. Happy viewing!

What happened to the Amityville Horror house? Taking a look at Ronald DeFeo's infamous $1.46 million home where his family was murdered in cold blood

www.dailymail.co.uk, February 2, 2024
It's been 50 years since the murder of a family in a Dutch Colonial home sparked subsequent reports of the Lutz family's experiences, which became known as the Amityville Horror. Ronald DeFeo Jr. (pictured right in 1974) fired and killed six members of his family on 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house on the south shore of Long Island, New York, on November 13, 1974. The cold-blooded killings shocked the nation, but the house acquired even more notoriety three years later, when its new owners were forced to leave, claiming they were terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there. The events spawned a slew of books and films that have made the home one of the country's most popular. The DeFoe family is shown inset.