Rod Steiger

Rod Steiger

Rod Steiger was an American actor who had an extensive career in film, television, and stage. He made his stage debut in 1946 with Civic Repertory Theatre's production of the melodrama Curse you, Jack Dalton!. Four years later, he played onstage in a production of An Enemy of the People at the Music Box Theatre. A small role in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa (1951) marked his film debut. In 1953, he played the title role in the teleplay "Marty" (two years before the film starring Ernest Borgnine) to critical praise. His breakthrough role came with the crime drama On the Waterfront (1954), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination, and subsequent appearance in Fred Zinnemann's musical Oklahoma!. Steiger played a crooked promoter who hires a sports journalist in the Mark Robson-directed film noir The Harder They Fall (1956). In the 1957 British thriller Across the Bridge, he portrayed a German con-artist on the run in Mexico. The following year, he played a psychopathic criminal in Andrew L. Stone's thriller Cry Terror!. He played gangster Al Capone in the 1959 Richard Wilson-directed biopic of same name, and was cast in the role of a destroyer commander in the epic war film The Longest Day (1962). For playing a survivor of the Holocaust in the drama The Pawnbroker (1964), he garnered a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and nominations for the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award in the same category. The following year, he was cast in the role of a ruthless Russian politician Doctor Zhivago, which was the biggest box-office success of the 1960s, and was included in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies. He won an Academy, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for Norman Jewison's mystery drama In the Heat of the Night (1967). He played a serial killer in the black comedy thriller No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), and ended the decade with the box-office flop Three into Two Won't Go (1969).

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