Actor Roy Scheider Dies at 75

Actor Roy Scheider Dies at 75


Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75.

Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years and died of complications from a staph infection, said his wife, Brenda Seimer.

He was nominated for a best-supporting actor Oscar in 1971's "The French Connection" in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and for best actor for 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse film.

Scheider's career gathered steam in movies such as "Klute," his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda's New York call girl; and in William Friedkin's "French Connection" as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Hackman's marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle.

He is best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film, "Jaws," the enduring classic about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers as well as millions of moviegoers.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was also the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer.

"He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call 'a knockaround actor,' " Dreyfuss said.

"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," he said.

In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies. He also says to the shark, in the parting phrase, "Smile, you son of a bitch!"

Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major. After serving three years in the Air Force, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of "Richard III."

His professional debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Romeo and Juliet." While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in the low-budget horror film "The Curse of the Living Corpse."

In 1977, Scheider worked with Friedkin again in "Sorcerer," a big-budget remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 French thriller, "The Wages of Fear."

Offered a leading role in "The Deer Hunter" (1979), Scheider had to turn it down to fulfill his contract with Universal for a sequel to "Jaws." (The part went to Robert De Niro.)

"Jaws 2" failed to recapture the appeal of the first film, but Scheider bounced back, accepting the principal role in Bob Fosse's autobiographical phantasmagoria of 1979, "All That Jazz." This won him an Academy Award nomination in the best actor category. (Dustin Hoffman won that year, for "Kramer vs. Kramer.")

In 1980, Scheider returned to his first love, the stage, where his performance in a production of Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" opposite Blythe Danner and Raul Julia earned him the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance. Although he continued to be active in films, he moved from leading men to character roles.
Filmography

Some of the movies featuring Roy Scheider:

Klute (1971)

The French Connection (1971)

Jaws (1975)

Marathon Man (1976)

Sorcerer (1977)

All That Jazz (1979)

Blue Thunder (1983)

52 Pick-Up (1986)

The Russia House (1990)

Naked Lunch (1991)

Romeo Is Bleeding (1993)

The Rainmaker (1997)

On television, he starred in the 1990s series "SeaQuest DSV" and in a 2007 episode of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent."

News From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/11/MNMTV05P6.DTL