Acclaimed Jaws star Scheider dies aged 75

Published on Monday 11 February 2008 21:36

HE WAS the screen everyman with the face of a pugilist, the mind of a scholar and the respect of his peers.

Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his turn as the pained police chief in Jaws, has died. He was 75.

One of the trailblazers of the American film renaissance in the 1970s, Scheider was twice nominated for an Oscar in a career which spanned Shakespearean productions and low-budget horror films.

His broken nose and pugnacious acting style made him an automatic choice when he happened to strike up conversation with a young director called Steven Spielberg, looking to cast his second feature film in 1975.

The role of Martin Brody, the police official harbouring the knowledge that a killer shark was preying on the shores of a island resort in New York state, allowed Scheider to cement his place in film immortality.

His line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" was voted decades later No 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes.

Blockbusters, however, were not Scheider's forte. He had earlier won plaudits from his peers in the acting profession for his turn as a pimp in Klute, and Gene Hackman's restrained partner in French Connection, the latter earned him a best supporting actor nomination.

"He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a 'knockaround actor", said his Jaws co-star, Richard Dreyfuss. "A 'knockaround actor' to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor, and doesn't yell and scream at the fates, and does his job, and does it as well as he can."

Born in 1932 to a working-class family in New Jersey, Scheider was taken seriously ill at the age of six with rheumatic fever and was bedridden for lengthy periods throughout his childhood. That illness would lead to an obsession with keeping healthy in later life at all costs.

During one break in the filming of Jaws, he phoned Dreyfuss and told him: "You don't know where I am if they call." While rain lashed down on the set, Scheider had gone off to a tanning salon, part of his regime.

His battered features were formed in an amateur boxing match in his home state. After graduating in history, and intending to go to law school, he served three years in the US Air Force.

On being discharged, he began acting, making his professional debut in 1961 as Mercutio in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet. Three years later, he made his film debut in the little-seen and best-forgotten The Curse of the Living Corpse.

Schlock horror proved a stepping stone to greater things, and throughout the 1970s, Scheider featured prominently in several big films, among them All That Jazz, the semi-autobiographical Bob Fosse film.

His portrayal of the furious, chain-smoking, pill-popping, sex-addicted choreographer and theatre director garnered him a second Oscar nomination, this time for best actor. In the end, Dustin Hoffman won for Kramer vs. Kramer.

His status could have risen further, when in 1979, he was offered a leading role in The Deer Hunter, but his contractual obligation to the first sequel to Jaws forced him to turn it down. The part in Michael Cimino's film went to Robert De Niro.

Despite the relatively lukewarm reception to Jaws 2, Scheider was undeterred, and he returned to the stage. His performance in a production of Harold Pinter's Betrayal was widely acclaimed, and he received the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance.

The 1980s and 1990s saw Scheider continue to explore film and television work which granted him an occasional high profile, such as 1983's Blue Thunder, but in general, he began to forge out a new career as a character actor in films such as Romeo Is Bleeding and Russia House.

In 1991, he gave one of his best ever performances as the dark Dr Benway in David Cronenberg's adaptation of William S Burroughs's Naked Lunch.

Scheider's later years were increasingly devoted to causes both artistic and political. He participated in rallies in his home city of New York, protesting over US military action in Iraq, and helped raise funds for a film studio in Florence.

He had been receiving treatment for multiple myeloma for two years, but died on Sunday in hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas.

FAMOUS LINE 'AN AD-LIB'

AN ACTOR who spent the twilight of his career making television series and narrating documentaries, Roy Scheider's place in movie history was sealed decades earlier thanks to one role which afforded him a seminal line of dialogue.

The actor first became aware of a production called Jaws during a party, when he overheard Steven Spielberg and a screenwriter discussing the plot.

His role of Martin Brody, scripted and adapted from a novel, allowed Scheider little room for manoeuvre.

But according to Carl Gottlieb, one of the film's screenwriters, it was the actor who ad-libbed the famous line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

Speaking of his career in 1986, Scheider said: "I've been fortunate to do what I consider three landmark films.

"The French Connection spawned a whole era (of films featuring] the relationship between two policemen. Jaws was the first big, blockbuster. And All That Jazz is not like any old MGM musical.

"Each of these films is unique, and I consider myself fortunate to be associated with them."