Hollywood actor Rod Steiger devoted exactly 50 years of his life to cinema, continuing to play until his death. He was nominated for an Oscar several times and won this award in 1968.
Childhood and participation in the war
The name of the future Hollywood actor at birth is Rodney Steven Steiger. He was born in the spring of 1925 in the small town of Westhampton, USA. His parents were artists touring the country with songs and dances. Frederick Steiger, the boy's father, left the family a year after the birth of his son, so Rod Steiger never saw his father and knew almost nothing about him. His mother, Laurent, quit her career as an artist after divorcing her husband and started drinking. His mother's alcohol dependence and poor social conditions throughout the country forced Rod to flee home in 1941 and join the US Navy.
So, as a teenager, he began his involvement in World War II. In the role of a first class torpedo operator, he participated in complex military operations, honoring his duty with courage and honor. In September 1945, he was forced to leave the Navy due to a medical report of an acute skin disease.
Actor career
In 1947, after recovering from the hostilities and improving his health, Rod Steiger decided to try himself as an actor. After joining the theater and unsuccessfully playing in a number of performances, he realized that the desire to become an actor was not enough, and began professional theater training in New York.
In 1951, he first tried himself on stage in front of an unusually large audience - on the stage of the Broadway Theater in the play "Music of the Night". The debut turned out to be a colossal success and gave the aspiring actor a lot of admiring reviews from critics. In the same year, he received his first minor film role: he played Frank in the drama Teresa.
Just 3 years after his impressive debut, Rod Steiger receives his first Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the crime drama At the Port, where he plays a negative character. Edmond O'Brien received the statuette that year, but Steiger was not going to give up and continued to win the hearts of the audience. Since then, the image of a negative hero has been entrenched in him, which he successfully embodied from film to film.
Rod Steiger was distinguished by the fact that he tried to bring in his roles much more human and lively than was originally written in the script. He tried to carefully think through the story of the character and feel his character as deeply as possible. The realism and sincerity of the bad guys performed by Steiger, oddly enough, sometimes attracted more love and attention to themselves than the goodies.
The years 1955-1960 became extremely eventful for the actor. He took part in many films and TV series, played the main roles in the films "The Harder the Fall", "Running away from the Wife" and "Over the Bridge". But one of his most important works during this period was the role of the American gangster Al Capone in the film of the same name.
The undoubted success and fame of Rod Steiger was obvious to everyone except the actor himself. He was categorically unhappy with the fame of a movie villain that had become attached to him, but he was simply not offered other roles. After Al Capone's triumph, Steiger leaves his home country and tries himself in the film industry in other countries, hoping to break the hated stereotype there. He successfully plays the leading roles in the Italian dramas "Hands over the City", "Indifferent", "And a Man Came" and "Doctor Zhivago" in which he appears in a completely unusual role of a fighter for justice. He decided that he had proved enough to the director and producers in America that he could play any role, and he was absolutely right. In 1964, Steiger starred in The Moneylender, which he later called the most successful role in his career. For his work, he was nominated for an Oscar, but the cherished victory again bypassed him.
In 1967 he returned to his homeland, where he immediately received dozens of offers. Now it was Rod Steiger's turn to dictate his terms and choose only the works he liked. The main criterion for choosing a film was the deep character of the character and his thoughtful story. He agreed to a role in a crime film about the problem of racism - "Midnight Heat", for which he received his long-awaited gold Oscar statuette. For the same role, he won Golden Globe and British Film Academy awards.
In the 70s, Steiger became interested mainly in historical characters. He brought to life the image of Napoleon Bonaparte in the war drama Waterloo, Mussolini in the film Mussolini: The Last Act, the role of Pontius Pilate in the TV series Jesus of Nazareth and many, many others.
Since 1980, Rod Steiger began to receive less and less leading roles in films, and the pictures themselves with his participation were no longer so successful. In 1994, he even received the Golden Raspberry anti-award for the worst role in the action movie The Specialist. His last work was the sports thriller "Duel" released in 2002. Rod Steiger died in the same year of complications following an attack of pneumonia.
Personal life
The famous actor was never able to find the time and place in his life for a long-term and strong relationship. He entered into a marriage union 5 times: with Sally Gracie (the marriage lasted 6 years), Claire Bloom (10 years old), Sherri Nelson (6 years old), Paula Ellis (11 years old) and Joan Benedict Steiger (2 years before the actor's death). Steiger has a daughter and a son from his second and fourth marriages.
