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 ...
I was a definitely a fan. RIP, Roy.
Requiescat in pace.
Did you notice that his character in Marathon Man was gay? When he is on the phone to "Janie", and says "get your ass over here, I wanna see you!", he is on the phone to Janeway, the character played by William Devane, and presumably, his lover.
I remember Scheider primarily for All That Jazz. He was also a typical Hollyweird leftist.
I loved him in Marathon Man and All That Jazz. Can you believe that Bob Fosse originally thought Richard Dreyfuss should play Joe Gideon? Roy said he got the role because Dreyfuss told him he didn’t want it, wanted to get out of it, and didn’t like Fosse. Fosse and Scheider ended up hitting it off and became friends.
RIP, Roy.
No he was in 2010 the sequel.
What happened, did he throw his support to Obama?
Agreed ... Sorcerer was awesome.
R.I.P.
He was in the awful sequel “2010.”
Ahhhhhhh!!! I’m STILL afraid of the water because of that movie!!!!
bummerville.....I always liked Scheider....was in some really good movies.....
Funny you bring up Marathon Man, as I watched this afternoon.
"Is it Safe?"
I still can't........LOL!
Blue Thunder as well, wow.
RIP Mr. Scheider.
2010, IIRC.
The point in the movie “Jaws” where the three men take off in the boat after the shark, until the end, is still one of my all-time favorite movie sequences.
2010, IIRC. Also starred in “Seaquest” years ago.
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