Roy Scheider

Roy Richard Scheider (November 10, 1932 – February 10, 2008) was an American actor and amateur boxer. He was best known for his leading role as Police Chief Martin C. Brody in the first two Jaws movies, choreographer and film director Joe Gideon in All That Jazz, Detective Buddy "Cloudy" Russo in The French Connection, NYPD Detective Buddy Manucci in The Seven Ups (his first lead role), and Captain Nathan Bridger in the science fiction television series seaQuest DSV. Scheider's final performance was posthumously released in the 2011 thriller Iron Cross. Described by AllMovie as "one of the most unique and distinguished of all Hollywood actors", Scheider was nominated for two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award.

Early life

Scheider was born in Orange, New Jersey, the son of Anna Scheider (née Crosson) and auto mechanic Roy Bernhard Scheider. Scheider's mother was of Irish Catholic background and his father was German American and Protestant. 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 lbs. Scheider competed in the Golden Gloves. He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, 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 and Marshall College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. After three years as an officer in the United States Air Force, he appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award in 1968. On television, Scheider played running roles on two CBS soap operas, Love of Life and The Secret Storm, and also played character roles in episodes of Coronet Blue and N.Y.P.D..

Amateur boxing

Between 1947 and 1953 – and, in one match in 1958 – Scheider boxed as an amateur based in his hometown in New Jersey. In his first bout, at the 1947 Golden Gloves, he suffered a broken nose and lost by technical knockout in two rounds to Myron Greenberg. He went on, however, to post a 14-1 (10 knockouts) record, reversing the defeat to Greenberg in the process.

Film career

Scheider's first film role was in the 1963 horror film The Curse of the Living Corpse. (He was billed as "Roy R. Scheider"). In 1971, he appeared in two highly popular movies, Klute and The French Connection; 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. His first starring role came in 1973 in The Seven-Ups, a quasi-follow-up to The French Connection, in which Scheider's character is once again based on Grosso.

Two years later, he portrayed Chief Martin Brody in the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws which also starred Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss. Scheider's famous movie line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat", ad-libbed by Scheider, was voted 35th on the American Film Institute's list of best movie quotes.

In 1976, he appeared as secret agent Doc Levy in Marathon Man, with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. Scheider reunited with French Connection director William Friedkin in Sorcerer, a remake of the 1953 French film Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear).

He was originally cast in The Deer Hunter, the second movie of a three-movie deal with Universal Studios. However, despite being under contract, Scheider dropped out two weeks before the start of filming. Universal offered him the option of reprising his role as Martin Brody for a Jaws sequel, and would consider his contractual obligations fulfilled if he accepted. Scheider accepted, and Jaws 2 was released in 1978.

In 1979, he received his second Academy Award nomination, this time as Best Actor in All That Jazz, in which he played a fictionalized version of the film's director and co-writer Bob Fosse.

In 1983, he starred in Blue Thunder, a John Badham film about a fictitious technologically advanced prototype attack helicopter which provided security over the city of Los Angeles during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games. This was followed by a role as Dr. Heywood Floyd in Peter Hyams' 2010, a 1984 sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which William Sylvester originated the role of Floyd.

One of his later parts was that of Dr. Benway in the long-in-production 1991 film adaptation of William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch. In 1990 he co-starred with Sean Connery in The Russia House as the smart-talking CIA liaison with MI6. Scheider played a mob boss in the Gary Oldman crime film Romeo Is Bleeding (1994) and a chief executive of a corrupt insurance company cross-examined by Matt Damon in 1997's John Grisham's The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Among his later films, he appeared as the crusty father of hero Frank Castle in The Punisher (2004), and in 2007, starred in The Poet and If I Didn't Care. When Scheider died in February 2008, he had two movies upcoming: Dark Honeymoon, which had been completed, and the thriller Iron Cross. In Iron Cross, Scheider plays the leading role of Joseph, a holocaust survivor with a propensity for justice, which was inspired by director Joshua Newton’s late father Bruno Newton. Iron Cross was ultimately released in 2011.

Other work

Scheider was lead star in the Steven Spielberg-produced television series SeaQuest DSV as Captain Nathan Bridger. During the second season, Scheider voiced disdain for the direction in which the series was heading. His comments were highly publicized, and the media criticized him for panning his own show. NBC made additional casting and writing changes in the third season, and Scheider decided to leave the show. His contract, however, required that he make several guest appearances that season. He also repeatedly guest-starred on the NBC television series Third Watch as fictional character Fyodor Chevchenko.

Scheider hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live in the tenth (1984–1985) season and appeared on the Family Guy episode "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey", voicing himself as the host of a toilet-training video; portions of which were censored on FOX and syndicated broadcast. Scheider provided voiceover on the Family Guy episode "Three Kings" (which was recorded in September 2007 but aired in May 2009, a year and three months after his death in February 2008) which also featured his Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss. Scheider guest-starred in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Endgame" as serial killer Mark Ford Brady, who is identified at the episode's end as being the biological father of series star Vincent D'Onofrio's, character, Detective Goren.

Scheider narrated and was associate producer of the 2006 Jaws documentary The Shark is Still Working.

In 2007, Scheider received one of two annually-presented Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SunDeis Film Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Personal life

Scheider's first marriage was to Cynthia Bebout on November 8, 1962. The couple had one daughter, Maximillia, before divorcing in 1986. On February 11, 1989, he married actress Brenda King, with whom he had a son, Christian Scheider, and adopted a daughter, Molly. They discovered his other daughter Tiffany. They remained married until his death.

Death

In 2004, Scheider was found to have multiple myeloma, and he received a bone marrow transplant to treat the cancer in June 2005. He died on February 10, 2008, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital.

Filmography

• The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964)
• Paper Lion (1968)
• Stiletto (1969)
• Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1969)
• Loving (1970)
• Klute (1971)
• The French Connection (1971)
• Assignment: Munich (1972) (TV movie)
• The Outside Man (1972)
• The Assassination (1972)
• The Seven-Ups (1973)
• Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York (1975)
• Jaws (1975)
• Marathon Man (1976)
• Sorcerer (1977)
• Jaws 2 (1978)
• Last Embrace (1979)
• All That Jazz (1979)
• Still of the Night (1982)
• Jacobo Timerman: Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (1983)
• Blue Thunder (1983)
• Tiger Town (1983)
• 2010 (1984)
• Terror in the Aisles (1984) (archive footage)
• Saturday Night Live (1985)
• The Men's Club (1986)
• The Egg's Sunset on the Upside Down Turned Ramp (1986)
• 52 Pick-Up (1986)
• Jaws: The Revenge (1987) (uncredited; archive footage, photographic cameo)
• Cohen and Tate (1988)
• Listen to Me (1989)
• Night Game (1989)
• The Fourth War (1990)
• The Russia House (1990)
• Somebody has to Shoot the Picture (1990)
• Naked Lunch (1991)
• Wild Justice (1993)
• seaQuest DSV (1993–1996) (TV series)
• Romeo is Bleeding (1994)
• The Peacekeeper (1996)
• Money Play$ (1997)
• Executive Target (1997)
• The Myth of Fingerprints (1997)
• The Rainmaker (1997)
• The Definite Maybe (1997)
• The Rage (1997)
• Plato's Run (1997)
• The White Raven (1998)
• Silver Wolf (1998) (TV movie)
• Evasive Action (1998)
• Better Living (1998)
• The Seventh Scroll (1999) (TV mini-series)
• RKO 281 (1999)
• Chain of Command (2000)
• Falling Through (2000)
• Daybreak (2000)
• The Doorway (2000)
• Time Lapse (2001)
• Diamond Hunters (2001) (TV movie)
• Red Serpent (2002)
• King of Texas (2002) (TV movie)
• Third Watch (2002) (TV series)
• Regulus: The First Nuclear Missile Submarines (2002)
• Texas 46 (2002; aka The Good War)
• Citizen Verdict (2003)
• Dracula II: Ascension (2003)
• The Punisher (2004)
• Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
• Carrier: Arsenal of the Sea (2005)
• Last Chance (2006) (short)
• Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2007) (TV series)
• The Poet (2007)
• If I Didn't Care (2007)
• Hearts of War (2007)
• Chicago 10 (2007)
• Family Guy episode "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey" (2007)
• Iron Cross (2009)