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Oscar-winning actor Rod Steiger dies at Age 77
Los Angeles, July 10: Screen actor Rod Steiger, an intense and versatile performer who won an Academy Award for his role as a bigoted small-town sheriff in the racially charged 1967 film `In the Heat of the Night,` died on Tuesday at age 77.
Los Angeles, July 10: Screen actor Rod Steiger, an intense and versatile performer who won an Academy Award for his role as a bigoted small-town sheriff in the racially charged 1967 film "In the Heat of the Night," died on Tuesday at age 77.
Steiger, who brought a burly, volatile presence to a wide array of characters he played during a 50-year career -- from the racketeer who "shoulda looked out for" kid brother Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" to a concentration camp survivor in "The Pawnbroker" -- succumbed to pneumonia and kidney failure, publicist Lori DeWaal said.
Steiger, who brought a burly, volatile presence to a wide array of characters he played during a 50-year career -- from the racketeer who "shoulda looked out for" kid brother Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" to a concentration camp survivor in "The Pawnbroker" -- succumbed to pneumonia and kidney failure, publicist Lori DeWaal said.
In recent years, Steiger also gained attention as an advocate for mental health awareness, going public with his own struggle with depression. As much as any Hollywood actor, Steiger was known for a prodigious range that ran the gamut from fictional characters in "Oklahoma!" (1955) and "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) to a lengthy roster of real-life historical figures, among them Rasputin, Pontius Pilate, Napoleon, Ulysses S. Grant, Benito Mussolini, Al Capone and W.C. Fields.
Along the way, he worked with such legendary writers and directors as Norman Jewison, John Frankenheimer, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and Tim Burton.
Jewison, who directed Steiger opposite Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night" and 30 years later with Denzel Washington in "The Hurricane," called Steiger "one of the most creative actors I ever worked with."
Coming less than a week after the death of Frankenheimer, Jewison said, "It is as though we are losing the lions from the arena. Rod was a lion of a man."
He will be remembered as one of America's great actors," Poitier said.
With more than 100 roles in widely divergent film and TV projects to his credit, Steiger was recently determined to be among "best-connected" actors in Hollywood according to two prominent mathematicians following the so-called "six degrees of separation principle."
Bureau Report
Steiger, who brought a burly, volatile presence to a wide array of characters he played during a 50-year career -- from the racketeer who "shoulda looked out for" kid brother Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" to a concentration camp survivor in "The Pawnbroker" -- succumbed to pneumonia and kidney failure, publicist Lori DeWaal said.
In recent years, Steiger also gained attention as an advocate for mental health awareness, going public with his own struggle with depression. As much as any Hollywood actor, Steiger was known for a prodigious range that ran the gamut from fictional characters in "Oklahoma!" (1955) and "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) to a lengthy roster of real-life historical figures, among them Rasputin, Pontius Pilate, Napoleon, Ulysses S. Grant, Benito Mussolini, Al Capone and W.C. Fields.
Along the way, he worked with such legendary writers and directors as Norman Jewison, John Frankenheimer, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and Tim Burton.
Jewison, who directed Steiger opposite Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night" and 30 years later with Denzel Washington in "The Hurricane," called Steiger "one of the most creative actors I ever worked with."
Coming less than a week after the death of Frankenheimer, Jewison said, "It is as though we are losing the lions from the arena. Rod was a lion of a man."
He will be remembered as one of America's great actors," Poitier said.
With more than 100 roles in widely divergent film and TV projects to his credit, Steiger was recently determined to be among "best-connected" actors in Hollywood according to two prominent mathematicians following the so-called "six degrees of separation principle."
Bureau Report