- Born
- Died
- Birth nameAnthony Maitland Steel
- Known primarily in Britain for his many "matinée idol" roles during the 1950s, Anthony Steel is perhaps best remembered in Hollywood and elsewhere as the erstwhile husband of Anita Ekberg.
His career never really took off in Hollywood; at one point during his marriage to Ms. Ekberg, he was referred to as "Mr. Ekberg" - a slight that reflected his success (or lack of it) in movies following the eventual breakup of the marriage.
Steel was born in London and was the son of an Indian army officer. He was educated at Cambridge and in World War II served as a Major in the Grenadier Guards Parachute Regiment and for a time served in the infant Special Air Service (S.A.S.) leaving in 1948.
It wasn't until after the war he decided to pursue acting, starring in such adventure-charged films as Malta Story (1953) for the J. Arthur Rank studio. His career was at its pinnacle and he was lauded as one of Britain's biggest movie stars when he married Ekberg in 1956 and set out with her to break into Hollywood pictures. Finding Hollywood unsatisfactory and even hostile, he turned primarily to making some not-so-memorable European films in the '70s and '80s - including The Story of O (1975) (The Story of O)- and some guest spots on British TV.
He died on March 21, 2001, in Northwood, Middlesex, England.
- IMDb mini biography by: Patrick King <patrick_king@hotmail.com>
- SpousesJohanna Melcher(1964 - March 21, 2001) (his death)Anita Ekberg(May 22, 1956 - May 14, 1959) (divorced)Juanita Forbes(1949 - 1954) (divorced)
- In the late 1940s and early 1950s he was, along with Dirk Bogarde, the Rank Organisation's (and the UK's) highest paid actor.
- By the early 1960s, the war films that had made him famous had gone out of fashion and his career went into decline. He continued acting on TV and stage until 1989, after which he withdrew from public life. He lived in near-poverty in a council flat in Middlesex until 1997, when his agent, David Daly, tracked him down and had him admitted to Denville Hall, the actors' home in west London, where he spent the last few years of his life.
- While filming The Master of Ballantrae (1953), Errol Flynn ran his epee through Steel's hand.
- Distantly related to actor Raymond Massey.
- Educated in Ireland, then at Cambridge University, he joined the Grenadier Guards at the outbreak of the Second World War and was thus ideally cast in post-war films such as The Wooden Horse (1950) and Malta Story (1953).
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