Rodney Stephen Steiger net worth is $8 Million. Also know about Rodney Stephen Steiger bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Rodney Stephen Steiger Wiki Biography

Rodney Stephen “Rod” Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, Waterloo, and Duck, You Sucker!, as well as the television programs Marty and Jesus of Nazareth. IMDB Wikipedia $8 Million 1925 1925-4-14 2002-07-09 5′ 10″ (1.78 m) Actor April 14 Aries Doctor Zhivago (1965) Frederick Steiger In the Heat of the Night (1967) Joan Benedict Steiger Lorraine Driver Mars Attacks! (1996) Michael Steiger New York On the Waterfront (1954) Rod Steiger Net Worth Rodney Stephen Steiger Soundtrack United States Westhampton

Rodney Stephen Steiger Quick Info

Rodney Stephen Steiger Trademarks

1. Full-bodied, somewhat bombastic acting style
2. His chunky frame and serious-looking face

Rodney Stephen Steiger Quotes

• I like watching Charles Chaplin, Harry Baur, Spencer Tracy, Paul Muni. I like to watch any good actor. When I’m depressed, I’ll look around for a bad film, like the old films with chariot races and pulling down the temples and that. I find them very relaxing, like reading a comic book.
• [on winning the Best Actor Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967)] I wanted to win it. It’s important. It gives you greater latitude in the business and that means bigger and better parts. And I need that. I’m only 42. Paul Newman is 43, [Marlon Brando] is 43, but I look like their father.
• [on Marlon Brando] He was in a unique position. He could have done anything. But he didn’t choose to.
• When you lose your curiosity, you’re dead. I don’t care if you live to be 117. You’re dead.
• I’m ambivalent about Patton (1970). I’m kind of a half-assed pacifist and I must tell you, you know, your philosophy is as strong as your feelings on a particular day. If you’re feeling good and you’ve accomplished something, you can back your philosophies to the hilt. And I don’t know what happened, but I decided I’m not going to glorify this thing. I wasn’t going to glorify war… I was a schmuck, because if I did Patton half as good as Mr. Scott [George C. Scott], I might have walked into The Godfather (1972). So that was a big mistake.
• When old actors come up to me and say, “I don’t know if I should do this role. It might be bad for my image”, I say, “That’s tough that you only have one image. My heart bleeds for you!”. We are supposed to create raw people, explore life and communicate at the highest level; be it pain, joy or what have you. That’s what I believe. I guess you could say it does become a philosophy, a way of life.
• You get the Oscar and you get better scripts, better actors and better directors to work for and of course your salary goes up until you make your first mistake and then you have to start from the beginning again.
• The first thing that you should do when you win an Oscar is thank God. The second thing you should do is forget it.
• [on acting] It sounds pompous but it’s the nearest thing I can do to being God. I’m trying to create human beings and so does He.
• I tell young actors today to join the Merchant Marines for a year, and I tell young women to volunteer in a hospital emergency ward if they can. You get to see different people, cultures, dress – it’s a marvelous education for an actor.
• My career has been 65% virgin and 35% whore. I’ve refused roles many times because I’d have to lose my integrity, my dreams of doing something worthwhile with regard to character. That’s the virgin part of me.
• Method acting is anything that gets you involved personally in the part, so that you can communicate in human terms with an audience. Despite all the obstacles, the American actor has changed the acting world.
• [on Hollywood] A community of lonely people searching for even the most basic kind of stimulation in their otherwise mundane lives.
• [on success] Successful people have control over the time in their life. A shoemaker who owns his own shop gets up one morning and says, “I’m not opening.” That’s a successful guy.

Rodney Stephen Steiger Important Facts

• $1,000,000
• $150,000
• $25,000
• His third wife, Sherry Nelson, was a former ballerina, before becoming Rod’s secretary. Her marriage to him was her second.
• His paternal grandfather, Frederick Steiger, was German, and his paternal grandmother, Anna A. Libschick, was Austrian. Rod’s maternal grandparents, Frank Driver and Amelia Fesler, were of German origin.
• When polled by the AFI Steiger named “The Good Earth” as his favorite film.
• Had appeared in two Best Picture Academy Award winners: On the Waterfront (1954) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).
• He was the first person to win the best actor BAFTA two years in a row and the Oscar in the second year (For The Pawnbroker (1964) and In the Heat of the Night (1967)). The second one was Colin Firth in A Single Man (2009) and The King’s Speech (2010).
• His last televised appearance was on Jon Favreau’s Dinner for Five (2001), the episode aired April 29, 2002, Steiger passed away in July.
• He studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village, New York City.
• Member of Handgun Control Inc.
• Was not the first choice to play the role of Sheriff Bill Gillespie in the 1967 Best Picture Academy Award-winner In the Heat of the Night (1967), for which Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar. The role was first offered to George C. Scott, who accepted, according to producer Walter Mirisch’s memoir “I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History”. Scott backed out when his wife Colleen Dewhurst wanted him to direct her in a play on Broadway. Ironically, Steiger later turned down the lead in Patton (1970) that went to Scott, which brought him his own Best Actor Oscar.
• 1976: Fell into a deep depression after undergoing triple heart bypass surgery.
• He was honored with being chosen as one of AFI’s 50 stars of the second half of the 20th century.
• Won the role of Viktor Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965) only after two other actors turned the role down. After a month went by with Marlon Brando failing to respond to director David Lean’s written inquiry into whether he wanted to play Komarovsky, Lean offered the role to James Mason, who was a generation older than Brando, because he did not want an actor who would overpower the character Yuri Zhivago (specifically, to show Zhivago up as a lover of Lara, who would be played by the young Julie Christie, which the charismatic Brando might have done, shifting the sympathy of the audience). Mason initially accepted the role, but eventually dropped out and Steiger was given the role.
• Campaigned vigorously for a role in The Godfather (1972), which began shooting in early 1971, three years after Steiger had reached the top of his craft, receiving the Academy Award for Best Actor his role as Sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967). Surprisingly, the role Steiger wanted was not the title role of Don Vito Corleone (eventually played by his On the Waterfront (1954) co-star Marlon Brando), but the role of Michael Corleone, the Don’s youngest son. Paramount executives found his desire to be bizarre as he was much too old for the role and turned him down without even a screen-test.
• Shortly before his death, Steiger had undergone surgery for a (presumably malignant) gall bladder tumor.
• Most of the solo shots of Steiger during the famous taxicab scene in On the Waterfront (1954) were done after Marlon Brando had left for the day. Brando had it in his contract that he could finish shooting before the normal quitting time so that he could make his daily session with his psychiatrist. Steiger was deeply hurt and annoyed at Brando’s rudeness and lack of courtesy to a fellow actor, as it was customary, in a two-shot, for an actor in close-up to be fed his lines by the other actor or for the other actor to just be there so the first actor would have him him or her to play to. Steiger used his negative emotions to enhance his performance, and though he paid tribute to Brando as a great actor, he personally loathed him thereafter. Director Elia Kazan stood in for Brando in the back of the cab so Steiger would have someone to emote to.
• After he played Jud Fry in Oklahoma! (1955), producer David O. Selznick wanted to sign him to a long-term contract and possibly star him in the lead of his proposed remake of Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” opposite David O. Selznick’s wife, Jennifer Jones. “But I told him that I must have the right to choose my own mistakes”, Steiger told his biographer, Tom Hutchinson. “His face fell – he couldn’t believe anyone would refuse him. Neither could my agents!”.
• He told Robert Osborne during an interview on Turner Classic Movies that when he was in the United States Navy during World War II, he used to sing when it was his turn to stand watch on-board ship. The ship’s captain, overhearing him one night, put a stop to his impromptu performances.
• Steiger, who originated the role of Marty in the eponymous television production The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse: Marty (1953), said that he turned down the role in the 1955 movie production as the Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions contract would have bound him for years. Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster, on their part, said that they did not want to cast Steiger as they felt the public would not go for the same actor that they had seen for free on television.
• Served in the United States Navy in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.
• Is listed as the Centre of the Hollywood Universe by the University of Virginia’s Oracle of Kevin Bacon. He can be linked to any other movie actor in the classic Kevin Bacon-game style in an average of 2.651 steps.
• Enjoyed playing historical figures.
• He had always said that the favorite of all his films was The Pawnbroker (1964).
• He had an operatic voice; however, he had no ear for keeping in the same key, rendering his singing voice almost useless.
• His daughter, Anna Steiger, is an opera singer.
• Received the Gift of Life Award after tirelessly speaking out against the social stigma against mental disease, from which he suffered for many years.
• He had a daughter with Claire Bloom, and a son with Paula Ellis.
• He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on April 10, 1997.
• He was offered the title role in Patton (1970) but refused the role, saying, “I’m not going to glorify war.” The role was then given to George C. Scott, who won the Oscar for the role. Steiger calls this refusal his “dumbest career move”.

Rodney Stephen Steiger Filmography

Rodney Stephen Steiger Awards