"The longer Her Highness and I stay married," says actor Rod Steiger of his actress wife, Claire Bloom, "the more we are alike." When the bearish New York-born Steiger and the delicate, exceedingly British Miss Bloom were married six years ago, it had seemed to prove the maxim about the attractiveness of opposites. They settled in a pink house in Brooklyn, and despite enormous pressures caused by each partner being in such demand for films, the marriage has been close and tender. Steiger, an exceptionally fine actor, appears in four widely diverse film roles this year- as an aging pawnbroker, a mincing embalmer, Pope John XXIII and a Russian villian. Claire stars in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and is currently on the London stage. The roles they esteem most, however, are their private ones at home. "I suppose you could say," says Steiger, "we are beauty and the beast."

In conversations with LIFE report Ann Guerin, the Steigers talked of their marriage and their careers:

ROD: I never saw a play until I was 21. Actors were people from another world. When I finally got interested, my ambition was to own the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village because there was an apartment upstairs. I thought it would be great to walk down the stairs and be on my own stage."

CLAIRE: "When I was in New York on tour with Romeo and Juliet, I fell in love with a little wooden house next door to the Cherry Lane. I thought I would live there when I married Marlon Brando."

ROD: "Before doing a film, I ask myself- can I be involved without losing my self-respect? An actor used to go back to the theater for a stretching out, a cleansing- but that isn't true any more. The best acting I've seen in the last five years has been in films. Broadway is more and more like the stock market. It's interested only in money."

ROD: I don'[t want to make a great deal of money. I want to do well enough to have a good home, good food and wine, a new painting for both of us to enjoy, a jewel for Her Highness."

The article is accompanied by a half page black and white photo closeup of Rod looking at Claire- "The only trouble in our paradise is that we'd love to work together..." says Steiger, "But we can't find a script that has two exactly equal parts," his wife joins in, finishing the sentence. "It would have to be, or there would be trouble at home." An eighth page b&w photo Rod in the role of the pawnbroker and an eighth page b&w photo photo of Claire climbing the Berlin Wall- The Steigers choose roles that tax their emotions. Above, Rod plays The Pawnbroker, haunted by Nazi terror. At right, Claire is pulled over the Berlin Wall in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.: A half page b&w photo of Rod and Claire walking together with Anna on Rod's shoulders, and smaller b&w photos of Rod with a cape and Claire acting as the bull - After setting up an apartment in London, as a European base, the Steigers stroll through Hyde Park with daughter on daddy's shoulders, then, as right, stage a bullfight. "We're seperated more than we'd like to be, but after all, we are both well established and there is no remedy", says Steiger. "I wouldn't think of asking my wife to give up her career. She's been an actress since she was 14. You can't tell another person, 'Don't do this,' because you will have that person pointing a finger 10 years later saying, 'You stopped me.' There is a good deal of selfishness in our life, but we expect it and understand it. Creative people are in time with one another. The excitement of doing a new part temporarily blinds you to the rest of the world. I think I'm not the worst husband in the world, but I am the dullest when I fall in love with a part."; A small b&w photo of Rid reading to daughter Anna and another of her mother doing a dance step for her- Rod reads daughter Anna Justine a story. At right, Claire, an accomplished dancer, demonstrates a ballet step to the child. "Anna is the boss of our family," says Claire. "She was named Anna after Anna Karenina, naturally, one of my favorite parts, and Justine after Darrell's heroine. Rod told me at the time I would outgrow Darrell, but I didn't believe him. He was right, of course. I have outgrown him."