“Put them behind wire in camps and keep them there until we find it prudent or safe to release them.”
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Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen Steiger was an American actor, noted for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile and crazed characters. Ranked 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. In films, he starred as Marlon Brando's mobster brother, Charl…
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entertainment · American actor (1925–2002) · actor · television actor · film actor · stage actor · also Rod Steiger, Rodney Stephen Steiger, Steiger
Born 14 April 1925 · Died 9 July 2002 · Q273215
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2026· 8 entries
“s naming of suspected Communists for the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
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“I always tried to do things different. If I got a role which was similar to another I”
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“What is the greatest thing an artist in any profession can give to a person?—that would be a constructive, warm memory. Because that gets into your brain and therefore into your life, so to speak. And that”
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“appalled, appalled, appalled,”
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“I think my best work is in The Pawnbroker. The last scene, where I find the boy dead on the street. I think that”
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“If you had the choice of having the childhood you experienced, with your alcoholic mother and being the famous actor you are today, or having a loving, secure childhood and not being famous, which would you take? A loving, secure childhood in a New York minute”
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Public attention spiked: 7,369 Wikipedia readers in one day, 6× the usual 1,232, with 0 article edits.
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2025· 1 entry
Yahoo: Better than Brando? Why Rod Steiger should have been a contender
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2006· 1 entry
Was dedicated to his memory because he played Doc Wallace in the first two films of the series
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2002· 2 entries
At age 77, of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gallbladder tumor
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Died 2002-07-09.
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1999· 1 entry
The latter of which tells the story of former middleweight boxer Rubin Carter, who was wrongly convicted of a triple homicide in a bar in Paterson, New Jersey
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1998· 1 entry
Was selected as the 39th best American film in the original AFI's 100 Years
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1997· 2 entries
Awarded star on Hollywood Walk of Fame (1997).
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Steiger played Tony Vago, the mob boss of Vincent Gallo's character in Kiefer Sutherland's Truth or Consequences, N
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1996· 2 entries
Awarded Mary Pickford Award (1996).
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Steiger played a "jingoistic top general" who "petitions the president to go nuclear in the middle of a global crisis" in the ensemble Tim Burton production of Mars Attacks
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1995· 1 entry
"He's so good he made me dig into bags I never knew I had
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1993· 2 entries
“all I ever wanted in a woman”
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Steiger portrayed an aging gynaecologist who terrorizes his urban neighbors in a rural community in Burlington, Vermont, in The Neighbor
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1990· 1 entry
Steiger starred in Men of Respect, a crime drama film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth
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1988· 1 entry
Steiger and Yvonne De Carlo played a spooky elderly couple with developmentally delayed children in John Hough's horror film American Gothic
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1984· 1 entry
Steiger starred as a detective assigned to investigate the murder of a Chicago psychoanalyst (Roger Moore), a man whom he detests from a previous case, in Bryan Forbes's The Naked Face
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1982· 1 entry
As it was considered damaging to the army, and it was not shown on Italian television until a state visit by Gaddafi in 2009
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1981· 1 entry
Steiger won the Montréal World Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of white-bearded Orthodox rabbi Reb Saunders in Jeremy Kagan's The Chosen
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1980· 1 entry
Steiger received two Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actor nominations for his roles in Klondike Fever and The Lucky Star, both Canadian productions
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1979· 2 entries
A deep depression, partly a side effect of his surgery, negatively affected his career during the 1980s
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Clinical depression and health problems during the 1980s directly affected Steiger's career, and he often turned to B movies, low-budget, independent productions, and TV miniseries
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1978· 1 entry
Steiger played a senator in Norman Jewison's F
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1976· 1 entry
And again in 1979 and struggled with obesity, though certain roles, such as Napoleon, required him to intentionally gain weight
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1975· 1 entry
Steiger portrayed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in Carlo Lizzani's Last Days of Mussolini, which received a positive critical reception
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1971· 2 entries
Noted that his talent "developed steadily through films good and bad", and that the secret of his success was that he stayed grounded, citing a 1956 interview where he said "I pity the player who can't keep his feet on t
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Steiger played a chauvinistic big game hunter, explorer and war hero opposite Susannah York in Mark Robson's Happy Birthday, Wanda June, before agreeing to star alongside James Coburn as Mexican bandit Juan Miranda in Se
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1969· 2 entries
Awarded David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actor (1969).
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And that she quickly remarried Broadway producer Hillard Elkins the same year, a man whom Steiger had entrusted to care for her while he was away shooting Waterloo
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1968· 3 entries
Awarded Academy Award for Best Actor for In the Heat of the Night (1968).
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Steiger played a repressed gay non-commissioned officer opposite John Phillip Law in John Flynn's The Sergeant for Warner Bros
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Steiger played a serial killer opposite George Segal in Jack Smight's black comedy thriller No Way to Treat a Lady
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1967· 1 entry
Won Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for In the Heat of the Night (1967).
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1965· 1 entry
Steiger played an effeminate embalmer in Tony Richardson's comedy The Loved One, about the funeral business in Los Angeles, based on the 1948 short satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh
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1964· 2 entries
Earned Silver Bear for Best Actor for The Pawnbroker (1964).
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In which he played an embittered Jewish Holocaust survivor working as a pawnbroker in New York City, he portrayed an opportunistic Russian politician in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965)
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1962· 1 entry
Steiger appeared on Broadway in Moby Dick—Rehearsed, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, as well as playing a detective searching for a scientist's (Alan Ladd) mugger in Philip Leacock's 13 West Street for Columbia Pictures
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1960· 1 entry
He had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger (born in 1960) by Bloom, and a son, Michael Steiger (born in 1993), from his marriage to Ellis.
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1955· 1 entry
Steiger played an obnoxious film tycoon, loosely based on Columbia boss Harry Cohn, opposite Jack Palance and Ida Lupino in Robert Aldrich's film noir The Big Knife
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1953· 2 entries
Steiger played the title role in Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty" episode of the Goodyear Television Playhouse
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With a small role in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa, shot in 1951
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1951· 1 entry
And subsequently appeared in films such as The Big Knife (1955), Oklahoma
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1950· 1 entry
With a minor role as a townperson in a stage production of An Enemy of the People at the Music Box Theatre
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1947· 1 entry
And went on to garner critical acclaim for his portrayal of the main character in the teleplay "Marty" (1953)
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1946· 1 entry
In a production of Curse You, Jack Dalton
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1944· 1 entry
Off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines, Steiger and the Taussig encountered Typhoon Cobra, which became known as Halsey's Typhoon, with winds reaching one hundred knots (115 mph) and 80 foot (24 m) waves
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1942· 1 entry
And received his training at the US Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island
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1925· 2 entries
In Westhampton, New York, the only child of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger, of French, Scottish, and German descent
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Born 1925-04-14.
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