Rodney Stephen Steiger was an American actor, known for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile and crazed characters. He starred as Marlon Brando’s mobster brother Charley in On the Waterfront, the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker, and as police chief Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night. He was married five times, and had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger, and a son, Michael Steiger. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor on July 9, 2002, aged 77.
About Rod Steiger in brief
Rodney Stephen Steiger was an American actor, known for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile and crazed characters. He starred as Marlon Brando’s mobster brother Charley in On the Waterfront, the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker, and as police chief Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night. Steiger had a difficult childhood, with an alcoholic mother from whom he ran away at the age of 16. He was married five times, and had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger, and a son, Michael Steiger. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor on July 9, 2002, aged 77, in Los Angeles. He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger’s mother, but was told that he was a handsome Latino-looking man, who was a talented musician and dancer. Biographer Tom Hutchinson describes him as a shadowy, fugitive figure, one who haunted Rod throughout his life and was an \”invisible presence and unseen influence. Rod was born on April 14, 1925 in Westhampton, New York, the only child of Lorraine and FrederickSteiger, of French, Scottish and German descent. He said of his troubled family: “If you had the choice of having you experienced with your alcoholic mother and being a loving, secure actor, which would you take? A loving childhood or not being famous? I would take the loving childhood, which you would take any minute of the day” He was the father of opera singer Anna Steiger and son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
He is survived by his fifth wife Joan Benedict Steiger; he was married to his sixth wife, Joan Benedict, until his death in 2002. He had a son with his seventh wife, actress Joan Benedict; he had three children with his eighth wife, Mary Ann Steiger ; and a daughter with his ninth wife, Maria Steiger ; he was the grandfather of singer-songwriter Michael Steiger,. Steiger also had two sons with his fourth wife, actor David Steiger. Steiger died on July 10, 2007, in LA, after a long battle with lung cancer, and was buried on July 11, 2007 in a ceremony attended by family and friends at the UCLA Medical Center. He has been described as “one of Hollywood’s most charismatic and dynamic stars,\” he is closely associated with the art of method acting, embodying the characters he played, which at times led to clashes with directors and co-stars. He made his stage debut in 1946, in a production of Curse you, Jack Dalton! at the Civic Repertory Theatre of Newark. He subsequently appeared in productions such as An Enemy of the People, Clifford Odets’s Night Music, Seagulls Over Sorrento and Rashomon.
You want to know more about Rod Steiger?
This page is based on the article Rod Steiger published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
