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Posted on 02/10/2008 6:00:57 PM PST by lunarbicep
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 on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.
Mr. Scheider’s rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.
Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like “Klute” (1971), 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” (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman’s marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.
Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. 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 with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Rest in peace.
Oh no, not the Jaws guy!!!!
To me, he will always be Sal Russo in “The French Connection.”
Surprising. Didn’t realize he had cancer or that he’d gotten that old. RIP. Funny how time creeps up on you.
RIP. Thanks to him, I couldn’t swim in the ocean for a year.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
RIP...
Marthon Man and Sorcerer were my favs.
R.I.P.
Rest in Peace Roy!
Took a trip to Davey Jones’ Locker...
He was on Law and Order CI last season play murderer he didn’t look well
Seven-Ups - one of the greatest car chases of all time.
Rest in Peace Roy Scheider. Thanks for 35 plus years of celluloid memories.
2010
Monk get in here
2010 - the sequel to 2001
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