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Jaws star Roy Scheider dies at 75

US actor Roy Scheider, best known for playing the police chief in the Jaws movies, has died at the age of 75.

As well as starring in the first two shark thrillers, Scheider received two Oscar nominations during his career.

He was up for best supporting actor for The French Connection in 1972 and best actor for 1979's All That Jazz.

He died in hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had been treated there for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell, for the past two years.

Scheider's Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss said: "He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a knockaround actor.

"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."

Jaws, released in 1975, was directed by Steven Spielberg and was the first film to make $100m (£51m) at the box office.

Scheider's other film credits included Klute, Marathon Man and Sorcerer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7238211.stm

Sad news indeed. The third great actor to have died in the space of just 4 weeks. Roy Scheider never actually starred in any war movies, but I will remember him best for his role in "Marathon Man".

Interestingly, the last movie he made before his death is a similar project.

Roy Scheider stars as Joseph, a retired New York cop, who witnessed the massacre of his family in Poland 1941 and travels to Nuremberg to visit his son Ronnie having turned his back on him for the last five years for rejecting a promising career in the NYPD and marrying a German woman, Anna. No sooner does Joseph attempt to heal the rift with Ronnie, he swears that living in the apartment below under the false name of Shrager is the now aging SS Commander who committed the atrocity. With little hope of seeing him stand trial, Joseph talks Ronnie into exacting justice - and vengeance - and together they set out to kill him...

IRON CROSS
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1039614/

ROY SCHEIDER (Biography & List of Movies)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001702/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Scheider

Kind regards.

A really great actor, I only saw him on "Seaquest DSV" as Cpt. Bridger.

R.I.P

Not until the report of his death did I hear that in Jaws he improvised the tag line "You're gonna need a bigger boat." Who remembers America's "Summer of the Shark" back in 1975? How quaint it seems today, both on screen and compared to modern-day scares. An actual shark summer was quickly forgotten in September 2001.

Charlton Heston had wanted to play the Chief Brody role that Scheider landed in Jaws, but at the time he was committed to some disaster-drama films like Earthquake and Airport '75. Sterling Hayden was considered for the role of shark-hunter Quint. Robert Shaw had sneered at it until his actress wife Mary Ure convinced him to take the role, just before she died.

It was said Scheider underplayed some of his roles, but to me that can be a good thing, as with Gene Hackman. Remember Blue Thunder (1983)? His line "JAFO" seems like something that was supposed to catch on but didn't. The film's modified Gazelle helicopter was not bad-looking, a sort of blue AH-64 Apache with less antitank firepower. A powerful surveillance helo was fantasy twenty-five years ago, long before American conspiracy fringe theorists imagined them as Federal "black helicopters."

I guess part of the reason Scheider had no US war film roles because there were not so many sizeable ones, or successful ones, in most of the 1970s. He looked good using an M1 Garand in Jaws. But conversely, he might have been cast often enough as a policeman because of The French Connection and many other cop films of the time.

-- Alan

I only ever saw him in All That Jazz, a movie I didn't like very much, and that may have soured me on him a little. Looking back though, I can see how he might have been perfect for certain kinds of WW II movies if they had been made while he was in his prime.

Michael

Yea i liked him in the jaws movies and blue thunder and had wondered how old he was now too.And he is on tv tonight here i saw this week for the us. tv show criminal intent.

Michael Emrys wrote:I only ever saw him in All That Jazz, a movie I didn't like very much, and that may have soured me on him a little. Looking back though, I can see how he might have been perfect for certain kinds of WW II movies if they had been made while he was in his prime.

Michael

What??? You've never seen "Jaws"?

I thought everyone in the world had seen that by now.


Tony

tonyh wrote: I thought everyone in the world had seen that by now.

not me

I always liked his role in Marathon Man (he gets stabbed by the evil nazi war criminal Szell). His role in 2010 was another favorite of mine.

RIP

tonyh wrote:What??? You've never seen "Jaws"?

I have conscientiously avoided it. Successfully so far. I also have avoided The Towering Inferno and Airport. Anything else you'd like to know?



Michael

The first jaws movie is the best of them to me just like first blood movie was for the rambo movies story,acting etc... wise.I have seen all of them,even jaws 3D when it came out,probably wise roy did not appear in it,or he never wanted too?.Also the 3D one had no actors i see i think from the other 2 movie.

I think i did not even know of the jaws the revenge movie in 1987,like never saw it then or herd of it,straight to video maybe.It had martin broady's wife this time in it,so someone from the first 2 movies.And also michael caine in one of his worst movie roles most likely,when acting jobs where hard to get maybe too for him.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/
Jaws (1975).