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Whether he was playing a Mob underling looking out for his longshoreman brother (On the Waterfront), an infamous Chicago gangster (Al Capone), an embittered Holocaust survivor (The Pawnbroker), or a small-town Southern police chief (In the Heat of the Night), Academy Award-winning actor Rod Steiger always brought a simmering intensity to his roles.
A long island native, Rodney Stephen Steiger was born in 1925. After serving in the South Pacific during World II (“I loved the Navy,” he later recalled. “I was stupid enough to think I was being heroic”), he returned to New York to fulfill his artistic ambitions. An early student at the Actor’s Studio, he trained alongside Eli Wallach, Karl Malden, and his Waterfront co-star Marlon Brando. 1951 saw Rod’s first Broadway turn (Clifford Odets’s Night Music) as well as his film debut (Fred Zinnemann’s Teresa).
Throughout the 1950s and early ’60s Steiger was a regular fixture on TV, popping up everywhere from Ben Casey to Tales of Tomorrow to The Gabby Hayes Show. His most famous small-screen role was as lonely Bronx butcher Marty Pilletti in the 1953 Philco Television Playhouse broadcast of “Marty” (asked to reprise his performance in the 1955 movie version, he refused to sign a long-term contract and was replaced by Ernest Borgnine).
Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront and Best Actor for The Pawnbroker, Steiger took home the golden statue as Best Actor for 1967’s In the Heat of the Night. He underwent lengthy makeup sessions to portray the title character in 1969’s The Illustrated Man, based on the book by Ray Bradbury. Rod’s ’70s work ranged from starring as Napoleon in Waterloo and the titular comedian in W.C. Fields and Me to playing a priest battling a possessed house in The Amityville Horror. Later roles included a cameo as himself in Robert Altman’s The Player and as the (justifiably) xenophobic General Decker in Tim Buron’s Mars Attacks! After undergoing surgery for a gallbladder tumor, the 77-year-old actor passed away from complications at a Los Angeles hospital in 2002.
To commemorate what would have been Steiger’s 101st birthday tomorrow, we’d like you to vote in this week’s poll for your top film role of his. We’ve narrowed the list down to a manageable 20 movies, so if your favorite isn’t here, tell us in the comments below.