Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger was born on April 14, 1925.He is an American actor known for his performances in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Waterloo, The Pawnbroker, On the Waterfront, and Doctor Zhivago.
Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger, of French, Scottish, and German descent. Steiger was raised as a Lutheran. He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger’s mother (who subsequently left show business). Steiger grew up with his alcoholic mother before running away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw action on destroyers in the Pacific.After the war, he returned to New Jersey and joined a drama group before studying drama full-time under Stella Adler at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York maintained by the influential German director Erwin Piscator.
Steiger was married five times: actress Sally Gracie (married 1952, divorced 1958), actress Claire Bloom (married 1959, divorced 1969), Sherry Nelson (married 1973, divorced 1979), Paula Ellis (married 1986, divorced 1997), and actress Joan Benedict (married 2000). Steiger & Bloom appeared in two films together, both in 1969, The Illustrated Man & Three Into Two Won’t Go.
He had two daughters, Claudia Myhers (born in 1954,) and opera singer Anna Steiger (born in 1960) by Bloom and a son from his marriage to Ellis. He had two grandchildren, Hanna Rose and Ashley Victoria.
After undergoing triple heart bypass surgery in 1976, Steiger reportedly fell into a serious depression for eight years. Steiger gave an emotional account of his struggle with depression on an episode of Larry King Live.
Rod Steiger died in Los Angeles, aged 77, from pneumonia and complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor. He is buried in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery.
The film, Saving Shiloh, released in 2006, was dedicated to his memory.
