Joan Benedict Steiger: Looking for Love Once Again

Joan Benedict Steiger's career on the stage, screen and television spans decades, but it's her three romances that she recalls with happiness.

"Each one of my men was gorgeous, handsome and intelligent. They were all in show business. I only relate to actors writers and directors. I like intellectual men, world travelers," Steiger said in a phone interview from her Malibu home.

All three died of cancer, but she met each of them when she was a teenager and just starting acting in New York.

"I wound up in the end marrying them all," she recalled with laughter, considering herself blessed to have fallen in love three times.

Steiger was with her first husband, stage veteran John Myhers, for 30 years before his death.

They moved from New York, where Myhers was a Broadway star, to California, where Steiger pursued her career in acting. Steiger had regular roles on “General Hospital,” “Days of our Lives” and “Capitol." Her stage credits include "Promises, Promises,” “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” “Collected Stories” by Donald Margulies, P.J. Barry’s “The Octette Bridge Club,” and Horton Foote’s “The Traveling Lady.”

After Myhers' passing, she was reunited with Academy Award-winning actor Rod Steiger. They appeared in two films together, “A Month of Sundays” and the telefilm “The Flying Dutchman.”

"We started dating and he asked me to marry him. We traveled the world," Steiger recalled of their 10-year relationship.

Following his death in 2002, Steiger fell in love with television actor Jeremy Slate.

"We weren’t married. We would have been if he had lived longer," she said.

Her acting credits continue to add up, with a recent guest appearence on Fox's "Dollhouse," and other shows.

She said she strives to stay positive, despite all of her losses.

"I can be in another room and all my husbands are alive because I hear John on the screen or Rod or Jeremy and I run in and they are there, they are always there," Steiger said.

For now, she is preparing to write her memoir and tap dances three times a week. She can be found having lunch nearly everyday at , her favorite Malibu restaurant, where she likes to people watch and catch up with friends.

“I’m still learning after all these years,” she said.

Steiger said she is still open to finding love again, learning from her husbands to embrace life to the fullest.

“There must be a reason I’m still here. I better be doing something worthwhile with my life to be worthy of it,” Steiger said.

Learn more about Joan Benedict Steiger at joanbenedictsteiger.com.