Born on April 14, 1925, in West-hampton, New York, Steiger never knew his father and had a difficult relationship with his alcoholic mother, whom he would often have to retrieve from drunken brawls.
'I left home at 15 because my family had been destroyed by alcoholism,' he reflected recently. 'I used to get phone calls from people saying "your mother is causing a riot in the bar". Something inside me said you're going to do something that is good enough to earn you respect.'
That something was, initially, the sea. Desperate to escape, he lied about his age and joined the Navy at 16, serving in the South Pacific during World War II.
After the war, his service to his country enabled him to retrain for a new career and he joined Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio, the home of method-acting. Noel Coward famously described the Stras-berg technique as 'pretentious balls' but it served Steiger well.
His first big break came on live television in the 1950s playing Marty, the Bronx butcher, in a role which led to film offers.
He turned down a seven-year studio contract and the Marty film role went to Ernest Borgnine. Instead, Steiger was offered a few scenes as Marlon Brando's older brother in On the Waterfront.
Their 'I coulda been a contender' confrontation became part of movie folklore and he was nominated for an Academy Award, though he did not win. Even so, the scene was played out in a manner which can only have fed the deep inferiority complex which Steiger hid from the world.
Later the director, Elia Kazan, wrote that he had shot Brando's close-ups first leading Steiger to complain that Kazan was favouring Brando. Kazan said: 'I believe what happened hurt his self-esteem but not his performance. If Steiger has played a scene better than that one, I have yet to see it.'
But it seems that the seeds of Steiger's later depression were sown. It was to take more graft and luck before that elusive Oscar finally came his way. Another nomination followed his 1965 role in The Pawnbroker but, again, Steiger missed out.
Perhaps by way of compensation, the Academy finally recognised him for his role as a redneck sheriff in In The Heat Of The Night.
Given the turmoil in Steiger's private life, however, his Hollywood staying power was all the more remarkable.
Marriage No1 to socialite Sally Grace in 1952 lasted just six years. Steiger could not resist the pneumatic allure of Britain's Diana Dors when they made The Unholy Wife together in 1957, and they had a passionate affair. But the actor decided he was not yet ready to leave Sally.
The marriage eventually ended and in 1959, Steiger married the British actress, Claire Bloom, by whom he had a daughter Anna, now 43.
Bloom would later recall how, back in the Sixties, her brooding husband would spend hours gloomily sitting 'like a wounded child' although his depression only really took hold after his first heart by-pass operation in 1976.
'That destroyed my sense of myself as an immortal,' he would reflect later, adding that he had even contemplated suicide.
Marriage No 3, to the dancer Sherry Nelson, lasted from 1973 to 1979 and the old rogue was once again back in the dating game. But despite his depression, he never lost his charm.
It was five years later, while dining in a top Hollywood restaurant, that he spotted young starlet Paula Ellis - then with another man - and made that famous dash for the Ladies.
By her, he had a son, Michael, but, once again, it was not to last and the couple split in 1997.
Two years ago, he finally married a contemporary - Joan Benedict, a 74-year- old friend from Los Angeles. But it was his guest of honour at the wedding who attracted most of the attention. Towards the end of his life, Steiger had forged a close attachment to Elizabeth Taylor.
With their shared experience of multiple marriage, ill-health and past glories, a friendship blossomed. 'In a way, we're peers. I always say it's like the meeting of two famous gunfighters - say, Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok,' Steiger joked.
'There's an understanding, a camaraderie between us, because we know about the false myths of being a celebrity and how people take advantage.'
Steiger would regularly drive to Taylor's home in his sports car - number plate: 'Courage' - and the gossip columns wondered whether Hollywood's serial matrimonialists would finally get it together.
'The gossip columns have made it into a big thing, which it never was or will be, I don't believe,' he said in 1998, adding, somewhat ungallantly: 'She's in a plaster cast from her chin to her hips. Romance would be a little difficult - unless you are kinky about braces.'
His long quest for respect never left him, though, and he clocked up nearly 100 films.
When asked to name his top movie, he said: 'King Kong is one of my favourites because he's trying to get respect too. In my eyes, I was King Kong trying to fight the world. He was my knight in shining armour.'
Unlike King Kong, of course, Steiger was the big guy who got the girl in the end - lots of them.
