The archetypal B-movie actor, Sterling Hayden was never the superstar many projected him to be; a handsome, gritty performer, at first glance he enjoyed an erratic career, yet on closer inspection his lengthy list of credits contains a number of classic films made with many of the most celebrated filmmakers in cinema history. Born March 26, 1916, in Montclair, NJ, he quit school at the age of 16 to become a mate on a schooner, beginning a lifelong love affair with the sea; indeed, it was often suggested that he was never particularly enamored of the acting life, instead preferring to sail. By age 22, Hayden was a ship's captain, but a desire to buy his own boat prompted him to begin modeling, and in 1940 he landed a movie contract at Paramount. With no previous acting experience, he starred in 1941's Virginia, followed a year later by Bahama Passage. The pictures' successes made him a star, and he also grabbed headlines by marrying actress Madeleine Carroll.
Paramount began trumpeting Hayden as both "the Most Beautiful Man in the Movies" and "the Beautiful Blond Viking God," but his career ground to a halt when he joined the Marines to serve in World War II, resulting in a five-year absence from the screen. Upon returning from duty, he continued acting with Blaze of Noon, but after half a decade away from the screen, his career stalled, and apart from a brief appearance later that year in Variety Girl, no other offers came his way for some time. Finally, in 1949, Hayden resurfaced in a John Wayne Western, El Paso, and a film noir, Manhandled. The following year, he starred in John Huston's classic noir The Asphalt Jungle, portraying an ill-fated small-time hood -- a career-defining role. Still, he spent the majority of the early decade in a variety of other genre outings, many of them Westerns (including the 1953 Nicholas Ray cult classic Johnny Guitar). In 1956, Hayden teamed for the first time with director Stanley Kubrick, headlining the oft-imitated and widely acclaimed crime story The Killing.
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