Roy Richard Scheider (; November 10, 1932 – February 10, 2008) was an American actor who achieved fame with his leading and supporting roles in celebrated films from the 1970s to the mid-1980s including the lead role in Jaws. He was nominated for two Academy Awards, one Golden Globe, and one BAFTA Award, and won both an Obie and Drama League Award for his stage performances.
Scheider's best-known film roles include Frank Ligourin in Klute (1971), Police Chief Martin Brody in Jaws (1975) and its 1978 sequel, "Cloudy" Russo in The French Connection (1971), "Buddy" in The Seven-Ups (1973), Doc Levy in Marathon Man (1976), Scanlon / Dominguez in Sorcerer (1977), Joe Gideon in All That Jazz (1979), and Frank Murphy in Blue Thunder (1983).
Subsequent credits included Naked Lunch (1991), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), The Rainmaker (1997), and The Punisher (2004). He also starred as Captain Nathan Bridger on the NBC television series seaQuest DSV (1993–96).
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Early life and education
Scheider was born in Orange, New Jersey, the son of Anna (née Crosson; 1906–1984) and auto mechanic Roy Bernhard Scheider (1903–1976). Scheider's mother was of Irish descent with an Irish Catholic background. His father was a Protestant German American. As a child, Scheider was an athlete, participating in organized baseball and boxing competitions, for which he was classed as a welterweight, weighing in at 140 lb (63.5 kg).
Scheider competed in the Diamond Gloves Boxing Tournament in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, graduating in 1950, and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1985. He traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers University and Franklin & Marshall College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
Military service
From 1955 to 1958, Scheider served in the United States Air Force as a first lieutenant in air operations. He then became a captain in the Air Force Reserve Command until 1964.
Amateur boxing
Between 1946 and 1949, Scheider boxed as an amateur in New Jersey. Scheider said in a television interview in the 1980s that he took up boxing to lose weight. He said he had no desire to fight, but that his trainer, Georgie Ward, encouraged him to compete.
In his second bout, at the 1946 Diamond Gloves Tournament (Golden Gloves), Scheider suffered a broken nose and lost by technical knockout in two rounds to Myron Greenberg.
He went on to post an 11–1 (ten knockouts) record, reversing his defeat by Greenberg in the process.
Acting career
In 1964, Scheider's first film role was in the horror film The Curse of the Living Corpse. On television, he played running roles on two CBS soap operas, Love of Life and The Secret Storm, and played character roles in episodes of Camera Three, N.Y.P.D., and Coronet Blue. He was in the TV movie Lamp at Midnight (1966). In 1968, Scheider appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance in Hugh Leonard's play, which was adapted from the works of James Joyce, Stephen D, appearing in it 68 times at the East 74th Street Theater. He appeared in the films Stiletto (1969), Loving (1970), and Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970), and on television in Where the Heart Is and Cannon.
In 1971, he appeared in two highly popular films, Klute, directed by Alan Pakula, and The French Connection, directed by William Friedkin. The latter, in which he played a fictionalized version of New York City detective Sonny Grosso, gained him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Scheider became much in demand. He went to Europe to have key supporting roles in The French Conspiracy (1972) and The Outside Man (1972).
In 1973, Scheider's first starring role came in The Seven-Ups, a quasi follow-up to The French Connection, in which Scheider's character is once again based on Grosso. He was second-billed in Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975). Scheider portrayed Chief Martin Brody in the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws (1975), which also starred Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss. Scheider's ad-libbed line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," was voted 35th on the American Film Institute's list of best movie quotes. He appeared as secret agent Doc Levy in Marathon Man (1976), with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.
Scheider was initially set to appear in the lead role in Michael Cimino's never-filmed romantic thriller Perfect Strangers, but the film was canceled due to "political machinations" at Paramount. Scheider was later offered the role portrayed by Robert De Niro in Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), which was the second film of a three-picture deal with Universal Studios. He reunited with French Connection director William Friedkin in Sorcerer (1977), the second adaptation of the 1950 French novel The Wages of Fear. Although the film didn't do well at the box office, it has since acquired a large cult following.
Personal life
Scheider married Cynthia Bebout on November 8, 1962. The couple had one daughter, Maximillia (1963–2006), before divorcing in 1986. On February 11, 1989, he married actress Brenda Siemer, with whom he had a son, Christian Scheider, and adopted a daughter. They remained married until his death.
Death
In 2004, Scheider was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. In June 2005, he received a bone marrow transplant to treat the cancer. He died of a staphylococcal infection after a nearly three-year battle with the cancer on February 10, 2008, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center. He was 75 years old.