Rod Steiger

On one hand, he was an actor who gave great performances in beautiful films; on the other he was a terrible ham who appeared in low budgeted flicks.

I will never really understand what happened.

In conversation with Sue Lawley, Mr. Steiger discusses The Method, Marlon Brando, and his decade long depression.

He was completely out of place in Zhivago. What the hell was he doing there?

He was a wonder in No Way to Treat a Lady.

^ NWtTaL looks exceedingly unpleasant.

I always had this notion that he was kind of gay, or gay-adjacent....I mean, he had a thing for drag roles. What was the deal?

kissy-kissy

You should see him interviewed by Robert Osbore for Private Screenings. He does some funny impressions of Bogart and David Lean.

Many many years ago I was a background artist on a film. The old white shirt I was given to wear had a Rod Steiger label sewn inside the collar

Them rags gets re-used, r9.

From "extra" to "background actor" to "background artist."

His lobster monologue in "The Loved One" will live forever.

More from "The Loved One."

R3 I thought he was great in Zhivago. He was the outsider remember?

Of course, when you are acting with Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson, I can understand how he might seem out of place.

I thought he stole the show in Dr Zhivago.

He was great in In The Heat Of The Night too. Could have been a very difficult character to play and he did a real balancing act.

The scene in The Sergeant where he's nervously primping in front of the mirror as he gets ready for the visit by the private he has a crush on will always, always stay with me.

That's a good one

He was hilariously over the top in Amityville Horror but maybe that's the only way you could act that role.

I liked him in The Big Knife.

If you can’t say it, shout it.

[Quote] He was completely out of place in Zhivago. What the hell was he doing there?

You could say the same for Julie Christie, Tom Courtney, Omar Shariff . . . playing at being Russian. Actually, Steiger is good in that boring film.

Steiger with the inimitable Ayllene Gibbons as Mrs. Joyboy

Steiger high on the hog in Robert Aldrich's The Big Knife

Steiger in Dr. Zhivago

His Oscar winning role and a very good performance

Overactor. I always found his hamminess unbearable. Why the constant screeching? He ruined every movie he was in.

[quote]He ruined every movie he was in.

He was well cast in "Oklahoma!," but his character's song was cut.

The Illustrated Man sounds like an interesting movie but I've avoided it simply because I can't stand Rod Steiger's hamminess.

Steiger was a ham.

Period.

Hennessy was a terrible movie.

Which is sad because the cast- Steiger, Lee Remick, Richard Johnson, Eric Porter, and Trevor Howard- are great.

Did anyone see his Marty? He did it on TV first but not the movie which won Ernest Borgnine the Oscar.

I only ever saw him in his brief appearance as the guy who bought the used bookstore from Mrs. Madrigal in the original 1993 "Tales of the City" miniseries. He was alright, I guess. Art Carney could have played the same character the same way and made more of an impression, but he was barely able to walk at that point. Steiger also had a voice cameo in an episode of "The Critic". He came out to a Hollywood tour bus and offered them cookies.

When I was around 20, I worked at a very fancy restaurant in Santa Monica. I had this regular - a big, bald jovial guy - who I just loved. He was so fun and easy to wait on and tipped great. No idea it was Rod Steiger. Hell, I know idea what a Rod Steiger even was!

He loved to tease me about that. Again, a really great guy.

I had just left the restaurant when I heard he died. So sad.

in a korean wig.

^ he does his hilarious Bogart impersonation.

He and Elizabeth Taylor developed a close friendship during his final years.

Claire Bloom wrote candidly about their marriage in her autobiography.

He IS the American actor Rod Steiger!

Top 3 favorite performances of all time is his In the Heat of the night.

I also love the small scene between Sydney Poitier and Beah Richards when she called a guy a cracker.

I like his speech. Newman, Beatty, Hiffman and Spencer Tracy were also nominees that year.

For years I remembered thinking his version as a Jewish Marty was simply brilliant.

Then I found out he wasn’t even Jewish.

Still, he was incredible in The Pawnbroker.

I enjoyed his various guises in the black comedy No Way to Treat a Lady

He's wonderful in The Loved One

When Rod gets his Oscar why isn't claire Bloom clapping?

"On December 17, 1944, off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines, Steiger and the Taussig encountered Typhoon Cobra, which became known as Halsey's Typhoon, with winds reaching one hundred knots (115 mph) and 80 foot (24 m) waves. As a result, three U.S. destroyers were lost, but the Taussig survived, with Steiger tying a rope to himself on deck and flattening himself as waves engulfed the ship."

R25

Rod Steiger is so great in this scene. He is in turn proud, belligerent, imperious, diligent and humble.

He suffered from depression and battled suicidal impulses.

He chillingly related how he once contemplated swimming into the whirling propeller of an outboard motor.

He was absolutely awful in that W.C. Fields bio.

He is great and I don’t know shit. But I usually think he over does his acting and often not in a good way. IMO kind of like an older Al Pacino, to me, trying to hard. As opposed to the younger Al.

Although I thought Steiger nailed it as Patton :-)

Sean Penn is the ultimate ham.

R50 greetings from Faye Dunaway

He admits to being sick of talking about the taxi scene from On the Waterfront.

R49- No one overdoes it more than Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire-

STELLA!!!!!

Hammy but entertaining.

What in the world is wrong with hammy overacting? Do we want all our characters tasteful and comatose?

R4- Off topic but George Segal was really good looking in the 1960's and 1970's.

R55 - are those are the only choices: hammy or comatose?

R49 George C. Scott was Patton, not Rod Steiger

R58

LOL I put a fucking :-) at the end of the Patton comment.

Yes it was George C Scott as Patton

R58- He has the same mouth as his formerly good looking son Campbell Scott.

Claire and Rod at the 68 Oscars

R61- In 1968 they presented an Academy Award together.

In 1969 they got a divorce together.

and they also did a film together R62 1969s Three Into Two Won't Go

R62, Which would explain why she wasn’t applauding.

I loved Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night. He and Sidney Poitier and Lee Grant. Fine acting.

Y'all know Rod was kind of crazy, right? In real life? I think he suffered from depression and he was a very difficult overly emotional man in real life. But his attention to detail in building his characters was nothing short of genius. I guess it helps to be kind of unhinged.

When he accepts his Oscar he has an accent.

[quote]He was completely out of place in Zhivago. What the hell was he doing there?

Giving the one decent performance in an otherwise terrible film. He's the only actor who actually seems Russian.

"Screen legend Rod Steiger" on Politically Correct in 1998

R11 In the UK we are called Extras, in the US background artists. But you know this already…

I bet he and Liz were fuckbuddies.

[quote]In the UK we are called Extras, in the US background artists. But you know this already

If you're going to lecture me, at least try to know what you're talking about. They were also called extras in the U.S. for many, many years, including when I did a lot of extra work as a young man. Later, the term "background actors" was substituted, not "background artists."

Steiger once clashed with director Rouben Mamoulian on Oklahoma!, as he was intolerant of Steiger's unusual acting technique. Steiger ignored the director's concerns that he was mumbling his lines, and when he began chomping loudly on an apple during a scene with Gordon MacRae, Mamoulian exclaimed: "Get out of my life!"

I remember renting a schlock horror film during high school and being surprised to find him in it. It was a really camp, over-the-top slasher film called American Gothic, set on a remote island populated by a family of demented killers who are frozen in time.

We loved the creepy adult children (one was played by another Oscar winner, I think, named Michael J. Pollard). The grown “children “ are dressed in a baby doll dress and sailor suit or denim toddler-type overalls. They play with real guns and push one of their victims too hard on the swing, and send him over a rocky cliff, all while singing a lullaby in baby voices. It’s pretty good as a guilty pleasure.

[quote]Steiger once clashed with director Rouben Mamoulian on Oklahoma!, as he was intolerant of Steiger's unusual acting technique.

Rouben Mamoulian directed the original Broadway production of "Oklahoma!," in which Steiger's role was played by Howard da Silva, later Ben Franklin in "1776." Fred Zinnemann directed the movie of "Oklahoma!"

Scene by Scene

R76, “Is this in color?”

R72 My god you are so fucking boring, I bet you could suck the energy out of a room just by entering it. I wasn’t lecturing you, I was trying to be friendly. Now fuck of and bask in your superiority.

You sound nuts, R78.

Sometimes I think the excessive amount of trolling and nit picking we experience here is exemplary of what goes on every day in our larger society, as we become more and more fractious and divided. We have translated our anxieties into provoking others and being mean. The subject that attracted us to this thread fades as our conflicts over bullshit become central. It's like watching lab rats.

He could be talking about a staged Oklahoma which was done in Europe about the time the film came out. It could have been directed by Mamoulian. I don't know the specifics but Rod was definitely in it. Shirley Jones says Steiger was fired from it.

R80

You are having these kind of silly arguments and nitpicking and drama bitching in real time with real people?

For me the only time I see this kind of yacking is on line. People making slurs and talking tough and abusive behind the safety and secrecy of the iPad. Internet tough talkers..

In real life the people I meet are usually not unfriendly. Some even border on friendly. Even people who voted differently than me are often friendly.

Punks behind the safety of an iPad can say just about anything they want. If they said those things in real life they might end up with a punch in the mouth. In real life with real people many of the tough talkers are as silent as can be.

The Internet has not been healthy in terms of mental health. That is also what makes DL so much fun. The lack of good mental health for so many.