Academy Award winner Rod Steiger dies at 77
Mr. Steiger died at a hospital from pneumonia and kidney failure, which developed after his gallbladder was removed, said his publicist, Lori DeWaal.
A devoted practitioner of Method acting, Mr. Steiger prided himself in taking challenging roles. He had more than 100 movie and television credits, convincingly portraying such figures as Mussolini, Rasputin, Pope John XXIII, Rudolf Hess, Pontius Pilate, Napoleon, W.C. Fields and Al Capone.
"I'm 60 percent virgin and 40 percent whore," Mr. Steiger said in a 2000 interview. "I've not sold out that much, and I've made my own mistakes."
"On the Waterfront," the 1954 blockbuster about racketeering on the New York and New Jersey docks, features one of the greatest exchanges ever put on film. As the two brothers ride in the back of a taxi, Brando castigates Mr. Steiger for making him throw a boxing match: "I coulda had class! I coulda been a contender."
The film won seven Academy Awards, including honors for Brando and director Elia Kazan. Mr. Steiger had to make do with an Oscar nomination.
He won the Academy Award for best actor in 1967 for "In the Heat of the Night," in which he played a bigoted lawman who grudgingly becomes the ally of a visiting black detective portrayed by Sidney Poitier. The film remains a riveting portrait of racial tension during the civil-rights era.
Mr. Steiger also received an Oscar nomination for the 1965 film "The Pawnbroker." He played a Jew living a secluded life in Harlem, haunted by memories of his life in a Nazi camp. It was the film of which he was most proud.
"I always tried to put him in every film I did because to me, he was like an anchor for the rest of the cast," said Norman Jewison, director of "In the Heat of the Night." Jewison also directed Mr. Steiger in 1999's "The Hurricane" and 1978's "F.I.S.T."
Mr. Steiger admitted making a mistake in declining the starring role in "Patton," believing the film would glorify war and killing. George C. Scott got the part, and it brought him an Oscar, which he refused.
Rodney Stephen Steiger was born April 14, 1925, in Westhampton, N.Y., the only child of a struggling song-and-dance team that parted soon after his birth. His mother married again, and the boy grew up in a quarrelsome household in Newark, N.J. He once told the Los Angeles Times that his difficult childhood gave him a drive to succeed.
"People used to laugh at my family because of alcoholic problems," he said in 1991. "I used to pull my mother out of saloons and I heard the neighbors titter. I must have sworn to myself someday that I would do something good enough that they would respect the name of Steiger. I think that is what gave me a certain intensity."
Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Navy at 16. He served as a torpedoman in the South Pacific during World War II and took part in some of its greatest battles, including the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns.
Though Mr. Steiger consistently gave interesting performances after "In the Heat of the Night," the roles never lived up to his earlier work. "What was most admirable about Steiger was that to the end he lived up to the old credo that there are no small parts, just small actors," said Los Angeles Times film reviewer Kevin Thomas. "He gave his best to the largely supporting roles in a number of mainly otherwise forgettable movies that made up the later years of his film career."
It was during a career slump in the early 1970s that Mr. Steiger's demons manifested themselves. Married five times, including once to actress Claire Bloom, he faced the biggest battle in his personal life with clinical depression. He tried to kill himself twice.
Though his agent and manager advised him not to talk about his depression, Mr. Steiger went public in the late 1980s about the illness. In 1993, he testified before Congress, helping to secure nearly $24 million in federal funding for mental-health research.
Mr. Steiger is survived by his fifth wife, Joan Benedict Steiger; a daughter, Anna; and a son, Michael.
Information from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.