Trivia

Had four children with Betty Ann de Noon. The couple married and divorced three times and went through a nasty custody battle.

Was first choice of producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown to play the role of Quint in Jaws (1975), but Hayden's tax problems with the US government--he lived outside the country and if he entered the US he would have been arrested--precluded his taking the role.

Dropped out of high school at the age of 15 and became a sailor, earning his master's license by the age of 21.

He was the original choice to play the knife thrower Britt in The Magnificent Seven (1960). The part went to James Coburn when Hayden proved unavailable.

He has appeared in five films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Johnny Guitar (1954), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), The Godfather (1972) and The Long Goodbye (1973).

In 1941, Paramount studios started advertising him as "The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies!"

When the US entered World War II, Hayden changed his name to John Hamilton to obscure his Hollywood past, and joined the Office of Strategic Services--the predecessor of the CIA--headed by Col. "Wild Bill" Donovan, whose son Hayden had sailed with. Trained in guerrilla warfare, Hayden operated a fishing boat off of Yugoslavia to pick up downed Allied pilots and to supply Josip Broz Tito's Communist partisans. He won a Silver Star and a promotion to captain by the time he was discharged in 1945. He had also become enthusiastic about Communism, and joined the Communist Party after he returned to Hollywood. According to Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley's book "Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s", he was recruited by actress Karen Morley, who was a party activist, and screenwriter and future director Abraham Polonsky assigned him to a group of backlot workers to learn union militancy. He and others like him were, according to Billingsley, tasked with swinging the Screen Writers Guild to the supposedly Communist-controlled Conference of Studio Unions, which launched a strike against the studios in 1946-1947. Communist Party membership was secret, and they were to keep their identities secret from other non-Communist industry and union people, Billingsley claimed. Hayden later joined the Committee for the First Amendment, a group of politically active Hollywood actors that included John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye and John Garfield that opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee's persecution of the Hollywood 19, who were suspected of Communist Party membership (the 19 later devolved into the Hollywood 10). Huston vetted the group's members to ensure that none of them were or had been Communists, and when it came out that Hayden was one, the group broke up. Members like Bogart felt that they had been used by the Communist Party, and were not amused.

Bought a canal barge in the Netherlands and moved it to Paris to live on it part of the time (1969).

Universal Studios were so keen on having Sterling play the role of Quint in Jaws they tried to get round his tax problems. Being heavily in debt to the IRS for back taxes had caused Sterling to live abroad for many years and if he entered the States to do film work most of his pay would be seized by the IRS. However he was also a writer and those earnings wouldn't be subject to any penalty so the studio came up with the idea of paying him the union rate for the film and a large sum for a script but the producers figured that the IRS would see through the scheme and it was decided not to risk it.

In 1980, the perpetually hard-up-for-cash Hayden was cast in the film Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981) at a salary of $250,000 ($50,000 per week for five weeks), but broke his contract to go to Yugoslavia to cover the death of Josip Broz Tito for "Rolling Stone" magazine on spec, with no money up front. He told Tom Snyder in a 1981 interview on Tomorrow Coast to Coast (1973) that he never did finish the article.

Sterling Hayden's agent thought Sterling should have been a "nineteenth century sea captain.".

According to his 1963 memoir "Wanderer", Hayden reluctantly accepted a co-starring role in A Summer Place (1959) for $40,000 (approximately $314,000 in 2012 dollars) when his ex-wife Betty Ann de Noon prevented him from sailing to Scandinavia in his sloop The Wanderer with their four children. Hayden took the part because he was broke due to legal bills related to his three divorces from De Noon and their prolonged child custody battle and because of his cavalier disregard for money. A seasoned sailor, he intended to use the sea voyage, which he planned to film as a TV series or a documentary, as a vehicle to leave Hollywood behind. He took a $50,000 advance for the documentary but never made it or "A Summer Place". Hayden appeared in only one TV show in 1960 before making Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) four years later for his The Killing (1956) director Stanley Kubrick, as he followed through with his plan to ditch Hollywood.

In his childhood, he lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Maine.

Had six children: Christian, Dana, Gretchen and Matthew with Betty Ann de Noon; Andrew Hayden and David with Catherine Devine McConnell.

Eric Roberts, his co-star in King of the Gypsies (1978), claimed that Hayden was a regular smoker of hashish.

Was considered for the role of Tarzan by Sol Lesser Productions/RKO Radio Pictures to replace Johnny Weissmuller. Desiring more dramatic parts and a more serious career, he declined in favor of Lex Barker.