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Rod Steiger: Roles
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Along with his ''On the Waterfront'' costar Marlon Brando, Steiger was one of the earliest and most prominent proponents of Actor's Studio-style Method acting. In 1954's ''Waterfront,'' only his second film, he earned an Oscar nomination for his role as Charley, the Brando character's brother, sharing one of the most memorable scenes in movies with Brando in the back of a taxi. Steiger got the role after starring in the original TV version of ''Marty'' as a lonely butcher, a role that would later win Ernest Borgnine an Oscar. Such characters established a pattern of tough-guy roles (including such real-life figures as Al Capone, Napoleon, and Mussolini) that would last the rest of Steiger's life.
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In the 90s, Steiger could still command leading roles not only in TV-movies but ... in feature films like "Men of Respect" (1991), a contemporary retelling of "Macbeth" set in the South Bronx. After playing himself in Robert Altman's "The Player", with just about every other actor in Hollywood, Steiger got a chance to play a tough guy once again in the Sylvester Stallone-Sharon Stone starrer "The Specialist" (1994) playing a Cuban crime boss. Unfortunately, more attention was generated by his hokey Spanish accent than his performance. Despite Steiger's bout with depression in the 90's, he still managed to continue his work in film and television. He accured supporting role credits in films such as "Mars Attack" (1996), "Shiloh" (1997) and "Crazy In Alabama" (1999). In 2003, Steiger supported Oscar nominee Christopher Walken and Chazz Palminteri in "Poolhall Junkies," in which Steiger played the proprietor of the pollhall where the main action takes place.
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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... 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).
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Creating a sensation with that semi-improvised taxicab scene from On the Waterfront, Steiger fired audiences' imaginations whenever he was linked with forthright directors who brooked no nonsense. Although he won an Oscar for the easier role as a bigoted good old boy who sees the light of brotherhood in In the Heat of the Night, his repressed basket case in The Pawnbroker was a more daring piece of work. Since these halcyon years (which ... brought forth a scene-stealing villain lending sharp menace to the soft-focus Doctor Zhivago), Steiger has made curious choices and slipped back into bad habits visible from his pre-stardom days. Huffing and puffing to blow down Jack Palance's career in The Big Knife, his amalgam of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn is such a screaming meemie no one could take him seriously, and this is the kind of barnstorming acting that follows his Oscar with few exceptions. Throughout his career, for every occasion of welcome restraint (Back from Eternity), there are distracting performances in major studio events such as the homespun Oklahoma! in which Steiger is incongruously threatening in a musical that has no ambition to be a rural Othello.
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In theatre, Ms. Steiger is proud to have starred in the only play Morris West ever wrote, The World is Made of Glass. Ms. Steiger has ... starred in the premiere of the one-woman show Leona as Leona Helmsley at the Matrix Theatre, off-Broadway in Dr. Faustus, and in Las Vegas in Promises, Promises. Notable television appearances include Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk, the Steve Allen Show, Candid Camera, as well as her starring role in General Hospital as Edith Fairchild” for three years.
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Steiger ... starred in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut's play Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971). In 1969, he appeared in the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man with his then wife Claire Bloom. He was offered the title role in Patton but turned it down because he did not want to glorify war. The role was then given to George C. Scott, who won a Best Actor Oscar. Steiger called this refusal his "dumbest career move". He also tried out for The Godfather.
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