Milestones

By RICHARD CORLISS

DIED. ROD STEIGER, 77, cuttingly intelligent actor who put the menace in the Method; from kidney failure; in Los Angeles. After Navy service he joined an Actors Studio class that included Marlon Brando (whose corruptive brother he would play in On the Waterfront) and helped to free stage and film performance from the kingdom of nice. But Steiger was no mumbler; he spat his lines with acid precision. He often played tyrants--Napoleon, Al Capone, Mussolini (twice)--but his presence was grander: he suggested the Old Testament God, annoyed at the world's slow wit. Even as The Pawnbroker's death-camp survivor, he went for earned rage, not martyrdom. Steiger won a Best Actor Oscar for In the Heat of the Night, which showed a warming trend. But his legacy is one of fire within ice. In any scene he entered, he lowered the temperature and raised the stakes. --By Richard Corliss