Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actor. His versatility is enormous, his devotion to his

craft, profound. He first came to international prominence in Ilia Kazan's on the

waterfront, an actor's film if ever there was one and followed up this success with a long list of distinguished performances most memorably in the pawnbroker in the heat of the night and Waterloo.

Through a long career and four marriages, he's known both great success and deep depression.

But his love of his work has kept him going.

If I was in a room with nothing but an automatic camera and the

studio cat, he says, I'd worry that the cat was being entertained. He is Rod Steiger. So it's a kind of fear, is that keeps you on your metal a kind of fear of not doing the job properly

Well the fear of failure is a very good source of energy if you can conquer the terror terror of fear of failure in any profession, it gives you more

strength for your performance. I think the main thing in my case it's a psychological thing of course that

words worn out but what I'm trying to say is my family was laughed at and

joked about because of alcohol my mother especially and I had to go and get her out of pubs and stuff when I was about eight, nine years of age.

And people laughed and said things, and the children were terrible.

And I didn't realize until I got a lifetime achievement award in Chicago.

By the way, lifetime achievements awards are saying, it's nice to know you're on the way out.

Anyway, I said, well well I think one of the reasons I work so

hard is I don't want anybody to laugh at the name of Steiger again. You want

respect? That's it. That's a big thing with me because of the lack of respect. That's it. That's a big thing with me because of the lack of respect for my

family when I was a young child. But it obviously goes back to the beginning of your

career as well. It's always been there because I know you've talked before now

about about fear when you were acting with Marlon Brando in on the waterfront in that

...