“During fifty years in Hollywood, trying to learn how to portray life on the screen, I just may have learned a little about life. If that’s in fact the case, I must give credit to some excellent teachers and some extraordinary fellow students.
As for the craft itself, I’ve never worked with a good actor from whom I didn’t learn something useful. During the filming of In the Heat of the Night (1957), Rod Steiger‘s work was a constant reminder of how lucky I was that I had found my way to two of the greatest teachers of any era, Paul Mann and Lloyd Richards. [...]
Steiger was a product of the Actors Studio, and his approach to his work fascinated me. His preparation period for a scene was astonishing in its depth. First he explored everything objectively. Then he make subjective everything that he’d found in his objective exploration. In this final process, he would zero in on his character so completely that for the entire period of making the picture he would speak in the same cadence. Even sitting down to dinner in the evenings. Even on weekends, when we ventured out to a movie or dinner or when we sat around the motel just running out mouths about various things. Working or not, he would remain completely immersed in the character of that southern sheriff. He spoke with the same accent and walked with the same gait, on and off camera. I was astonished at the intensity of his involvement with the character.”
– Sidney Poitier, The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000)
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,