Rod Steiger

Book excerpt: Rod Steiger is a frank and intimate memoir of this troubled and immensely talented actor, one of Hollywood's most charismatic and dynamic stars, by a film critic and longtime friend of Steiger's. Steiger has lived a life as full of drama as any he portrayed on screen. His father walked out after he was born, and his mother became an alcoholic. At sixteen he enlisted in the navy. With the help of the GI Bill, he studied alongside Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe at the Actors' Studio. Steiger's startling intensity first made its mark on television in Paddy Chayevsky's Marty. On the screen, his career was dramatically established in his second film, On the Waterfront, with Brando. Though he was nominated for an Oscar for his memorable performance in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker, he didn't win the coveted award until he starred as a redneck police chief in In the Heat of the Night in 1967. In the seventies, at the top of his success, his career faltered and he sank into a deep depression that held him in its grip for several years. Altogether, Steiger has appeared in eighty-seven films.