With more than 100 films to his credit, Rod Steiger made his first movie appearance in 1951 and never looked back, working constantly as both a lead and character actor until his death in 2002.Born April 14, 1925, in Westhampton, N.Y., Steiger was raised in a home with an absentee father and an alcoholic mother -- an environment he fled at age 16 to join the Navy during World War II. After the war, he studied acting under the GI Bill at The Actor's Studio in New York, and by the late 1940s, he was appearing in live TV plays as well as on Broadway.
It was his performance opposite Marlon Brando in 1954's On the Waterfront, however, that would ignite his career and earn him his first Oscar nomination. He went on to win an Oscar for his portrayal of Sheriff Gillespie in 1967's In the Heat of the Night. Other important movies for Steiger include Oklahoma!, The Pawnbroker and Doctor Zhivago.
Duck, You SuckerWhile on the lam in Mexico, Irish Republican Army demolition expert John Malloy (James Coburn) hooks up with Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger), a crass, stogie-chomping bandit with designs on the Mesa Verde Bank. Reluctant partners with differing agendas, they find themselves caught up in the turmoil of... Read More
WaterlooShortly after he is forced to abdicate the emperorship and retire to Elba, Napoleon (Rod Steiger) roars back to the front in defiance of King Louis XVIII (Orson Welles). Wellington (Christopher Plummer) readies an international coalition to battle the dictator at Waterloo. Despite its notoriety as a... Read More
The PawnbrokerRod Steiger stars as Sol Nazerman, a Jewish pawnbroker and Holocaust survivor embittered and broken by his experience. Sol becomes increasingly removed from his friends and his business in Harlem, which has attracted the attention of a mobster. Can Sol turn around his life and his shop? Steiger won... Read More
The Hollywood SignShort on cash and unwilling to give up their posh lifestyle, three washed-up Hollywood leading men (Rod Steiger, Burt Reynolds and Tom Berenger) concoct a plan that has them intercepting a mobster's plot to steal a load of cash from a Las Vegas casino. Enlisting the help of a young director... Read More
Guilty as ChargedBen Kallin (Rod Steiger) wants to see justice -- his kind of vigilante justice -- meted out to the man who killed his family. His instrument of retribution is his own private electric chair, which he also uses to snuff out other dregs of society. But when a corrupt politician frames an innocent man,... Read More
