[Sticks]

US actor Rod Steiger has died at the age of 78.




He died at a Los Angeles hospital of pneumonia and kidney failure.

Steiger won an Academy Award as best actor of 1967 for In the Heat of the Night.

A devoted practitioner of method acting, Steiger prided himself in undertaking challenging roles. He said: "My generation of actors was taught to be able to create different people; that's what an actor is supposed to do."

Rodney Stephen Steiger was born April 14, 1925, in Westhampton, New York, the only child of a struggling song-and-dance team that parted soon after his birth.

Steiger played his most famous scene with Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.

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.

More recently he has appeared with Denzel Washington in the movie The Hurricane and his last film was the 2001 movie A Month of Sundays.

He was married five times including to British actress Claire Bloom whom he wed in 1959 before the couple divorced 10 years later.


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Trying to keep up my new quota of Doom Gloom and dispair for Mort's latest productivity drive.