At the age of forty three, Rod Steiger, an intense, involved, finely talented actor, has at last come into his own. In April of this year, after two earlier near misses, Rod won his first Oscar and since then his career has been coming up roses. As an actor who has always set his own style and who believes that the performance is what counts, not the rewards. Rod has no regrets that it's taken so many years to hit the top. "I've learned not to stake my life on awards," he said. "For the winners, the awards are glorious. For the losers, it is another thing and the night can be unbearably cruel. Even in my excitement over winning for 'In The Heat Of The Night.' I stopped to remember how very different ti was two years ago when I lost for 'The Pawnbroker,' which is one of my favorite pictures. At that time nobody paid any attention to me. It was almost as though they were too embarrased to come near me. Or perhaps a loser is so crushed and sensitive that people avoid him. Whatever the real reason, it is an undescribable feeling.
Rod's actress wife Claire bloom joined her husband and we asked what she would have done had Rod not won? "I would have cried," she answered. "And I think that Rod would have cried right along with me. I, too, remember that night two years ago when he lost. How different it was this time when Rod was the center of the happiness and excitement! When he went backstage to pose for pictures with the other major winners, Rod let me join him in his hour of triumph."
Claire Bloom is, herself, very definitely a product of the theater although she likes working in movies. "I was three years old before I knew definitely that I would be a stage actress," she smiled. "My parents were not professionals but my aunt Mary Crew was a well-known English actress."
Claire followed the traditional training ground for English actors: won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Drama, studied ballet, worked in a repertory company and at Stratford-on-Avon before she made her debut on the London stage in "The Lady's Not For Burning" with another English actor, Richard Burton.
She holds the distinction of having starred with Burton seven times on stage and screen and is one of the few leading ladies who has shared the screen with Charles Chaplin. It was Chaplin who brought her to America for the role of ballerina in the poignant "Limelight."
Rod met Claire when they co-starred on the Broadway stage in "Rashomon." Recalls Claire: "I had seen the movie 'On The Waterfront,' five times and although I thought that Rod was very good at it, I must confess I saw it so often because I was madly in love with Marlon Brando. Of course, I'm certain that Marlon never knew that I existed.
"I thought that Rod was a perfectly fine fellow," she continued, "and I was very glad to co-star with him in 'Rashomon.' To make a long story short we worked well together. So well," she quipped, "that three months after the play closed we were married."
That was September 19, 1058, and the marriage produced a daughter, Anna Justine, who is now eight years old. Anna Justine doesn't seem to mind in the least that the successful careers of her parents keep them from staying too long in one place, whether it be their Park Avenue apartment or a rented house in Beverly Hills, Rome, London or any other city.
In the ten years since their marriage, Rod and Claire are only now making their first movie together- "The Illustrated Man." Following this one, they'll again co-star in "Three Into Two Won't Go." "But we are definitely not going to make a career out of co-starring with each other." Rod said. "After this picture is finished we'll know how we work in more or less double harness. If we get through the second movie, we have a successful marriage. "Clara [Rod's pet name for his wife] and I play together when the parts are right for each of us. We would never emotionally blackmail each other into taking a role with the other. We wouldn't want to say later, 'Look at that picture you made me do.' Clara and I don't get the kind of money the Burtons do. We're just a couple of actors who fit the parts.
"After these two pictures in a row I think that it will be time for us to go our separate ways, put some distance between us. We'll do two altogether then two alone and then, maybe, come back for two more together later. I can safely say that when we are in front of that camera we do not think of ourselves as man and wife. Clara fights for her scenes and I fight for mine."
"I think that the most important thing about our marriage is that Rod and I give each other courage," Claire added. Had things changed for Rod now that he had won an Academy Award? "There is no such such thing as success, you know. Success comes in waves," he said simply. "Everybody says to me, 'Now that you've won the Academy Award--' and I say, 'Nothing has changed.' My life has always depended on one thing- the part and the material. The material hasn't changed so the part hasn't changed. My agents who are the businessmen can do what they like with my salary as that is their business. My problems remain the same- looking for something interesting to do.
"The other thing is that scripts may come to me without other actors' fingerprints on them. I'm getting first chance at material that never would have been offered to me a year or two ago. Of course, the Award brought me unmistakable joy but, on the other hand, it hasn't overwhelmed me. Maybe this is because of a mature judgement that comes with age. Perhaps I still think I should have gotten recognition for 'The Pawnbroker.' That was the toughest role I ever attempted." Rod says. "After all, this was a man who spent most of his life trying to communicate with other people. He replied in monosyllables and wouldn't look at the person he was talking to. It was a real challenge to make the character interesting, not boring.
"Clara had read the book and told me, 'I think that this would be great for you.' For two years we tried to get it done but nobody would do it. Everybody told me, 'Nobody wants to see what happens to the Jews.' 'Nobody wants to see a picture that is grim.' Finally we did it for next to nothing and it turned out not only critically but financially successful."
"The Illustrated Man" is Rod Steiger's most strenuous role, requiring eight-hour sessions in the makeup department while his entire body is painted with tattoo-like figures. "The picture is about a man who is tattooed from his neck down to his legs," Steigher said. "They tried different ways of doing this. First they tested rabbits to make certain the dyes they used on my skin wouldn't become toxic and poisonous later on.
"The entire job requires the services of nine men: two to apply stencils to my body and seven to do the tattoes. It takes a whole day to do my body down to my waist and a total of twenty hours to do the complete body. I don't do any acting on these days. I just lie there and they paint and put stencils on and things like that. It's marvelous the first hour because it feels like a light massage. At about the seventh hour you want to wipe everybody out. I guess it is just about the most arduous makeup job that has ever been done on film.
"The man I play represents something like fate and destiny. People naturally ask about his tattoes and he tells them not to look at them because thee tattoes may come alive, tell them their future, and then they may have to pay a price. But the insatiable curiosity of people prevails. The tattoes are a whole series of stories put together. This is why I lie there for twenty hours being made up, because if the audience doesn't believe the tattoes, we can leave town."
Rod Steiger makes no effort to make a secret of his private life, claiming that it is so incredibly dull that nobody cares to read about it. "Clara and I are a couple of actors with an eight-year-old daughter and we have the same problems with her as other couples with an eight-year-old daughter."
"Being a father, Rod Steiger has some ideas on the so-called teenage rebellion now in progress among the young people. "It's not a revolt but the same thing that our generation went through, trying to express ourselves in an individual way," asserts Steiger. "Each generation must have the right to try to exist in the world on its own terms. What makes it seem like a rebellion is that they meet certain obstacles and opposition, so they have to fight through saying, 'Don't you see, we're trying to find our way.'
"I think a lot of our younger generation are disappointed with atomic bombs and unneccessary wars. They are saying, 'Hold on, you have given us a foundation to base our activities on but you must let us express how we go forward from that foundation. Otherwise there is no progress and it is just like handing something to someone in a relay race. They pick it up and go on in their own terms They must not repeat like a child.
"I consider my daughter Anna Justine a person, so I must not insist that she become like me or my wife. She