Movie News

Jaws star Roy Scheider dies

Mon 11 Feb 2:20 PM

Two times Oscar-nominated actor Roy Scheider has died. He was 75.

The actor, best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's Jaws, died in an Arkansas hospital. He had been treated there for two years for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell.

While he received a best supporting actor nomination for 1972's The French Connection and best actor nomination for 1979's All That Jazz, it was his role as police chief Martin Brody in 1975's Jaws for which he is most famous. His (ad-libbed) line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat", made number 35 in American Film Institute's list of most memorable film quotes. It was the first movie to make more than $100m at the US box office, and ushered the start of the modern blockbuster.

Scheider's co-star in Jaws 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 who 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."

Scheider, who was a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, also starred in Klute, Marathon Man and Sorcerer in the 1970s. He worked less frequently in the 1980s, but wowed critics in his role as Doctor Benway in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. He moved to the small screen in the 1990s in the Spielberg- produced sci-fi show Seaquest DSV.

He is survived by his second wife Brenda King and his three children.