Rod Steiger: Full obit
Posted: Tuesday, July 9th, 2002 12:58 pm
Rod Steiger, the beefy, intense actor who won the Academy Award as best actor of 1967 for his role as the unrelenting police chief of a small Southern town in “In the Heat of the Night,” died Tuesday. He was 78.
Steiger died at a Los Angeles-area hospital at 9 a.m. of pneumonia and kidney failure, said his publicist, Lori De Waal.
A devoted practitioner of method acting, Steiger prided himself in undertaking challenging roles, especially real-life persons. …
In movies and television, he convincingly portrayed such figures as Mussolini, Rasputin, Pope John XXIII, Rudolph Hess, Pontius Pilate, Napoleon, W.C. Fields and Al Capone.
“I’m 60 percent virgin and 40 percent whore,” he claimed in a 2000 TV interview. …
An interviewer once asked Steiger how he would like to die. He replied: “I don’t want to, but if it’s in front of a camera I wouldn’t mind.” His preferred tombstone: “See you later.” … Read full obituary
