Known for:	In the Heat of the Night, On the Waterfront, Doctor Zhivago
Birth name:	Rodney Stephen Steiger
Birthday:	14 April 1925, Westhampton, New York, USA
Height:	5' 10" (1.78 m)

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Free Image Hosting - Upload your favorite celebrity pictures. He was offered the title role in Patton (1970) but refused it, saying, "I'm not going to glorify war". The role was then given to George C. Scott, who won the Oscar for it. Steiger calls this refusal his "dumbest career move". He has a daughter with Claire Bloom, and a son with Paula Ellis. His daughter, Anne Steiger, is an opera singer. He's always said that the favorite of all his films was The Pawnbroker (1964). Is listed as the Centre of the Hollywood Universe by the University of Virginia's Oracle of Kevin Bacon. He can be linked to any other movie actor in the classic Kevin Bacon-game style in an average of 2.651 steps. Steiger, who originated the role of "Marty" in the eponymous TV production "The Philco Television Playhouse: Marty (#5.23)" (1953), said that he turned down the role in the 1955 movie production as the Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions contract would have bound him for years. Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster, on their part, said that they did not want to cast Steiger as they felt the public would not go for the same actor that they had seen for free on TV. After he played Jud Fry in Oklahoma! (1955), producer David O. Selznick wanted to sign him to a long-term contract and possibly star him in the lead of his proposed remake of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" opposite David O. Selznick's wife, Jennifer Jones. "But I told him that I must have the right to chose my own mistakes", Steiger told his biographer, Tom Hutchinson. "His face fell - he couldn't believe anyone would refuse him. Neither could my agents!". Shortly before his death, Steiger had undergone surgery for a (presumably malignant) gall bladder tumor. Won the part of Viktor Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965) only after two other actors turned the part down. After a month went by with Marlon Brando failing to respond to director David Lean's written inquiry into whether he wanted to play Komarovsky, Lean offered the part to James Mason, who was a generation older than Brando, because he did not want an actor who would overpower the character of Yuri Zhivago (specifically, to show Zhivago up as a lover of Lara, who would be played by the young Julie Christie, which the charismatic Brando might have done, shifting the sympathy of the audience). Mason initially accepted thee part, but eventually dropped out and Steiger was given the role. 1976: Fell into a deep depression after undergoing triple heart bypass surgery. Member of Handgun Control Inc. He studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village in New York City.

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