ROY SCHEIDER

ROY SCHEIDER

Roy Richard Scheider (November 10, 1932 – February 10, 2008) was an American actor. He is best known for his role as police chief Martin Brody in Jaws, his role as Joe Gideon in All That Jazz, and as detective Sonny Grosso in The French Connection.






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. 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 in the United States Air Force, he appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award in 1968. Scheider played running roles on two CBS soap operas, "Love of Life" and "The Secret Storm."


Film Career
Scheider's first film role was in the 1963 horror film Curse of the Living Corpse. (He was billed as "Roy R. Sheider"). 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, garnered 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", which was actually 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 (as his younger brother) and Laurence Olivier. Scheider reunited with his French Connection director William Friedkin for Sorcerer, a brilliant remake of the French film La salaire de la peur, but the film bombed at the box office.

He was originally cast as Michael (Robert DeNiro's role) in The Deer Hunter, the second movie of a three-movie deal with Universal Studios. However, bound by a Universal contract to make a Jaws sequel, he was deprived of the role. In 1979, four years after he appeared in Jaws, 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 Bob Fosse.

In 1983, he starred in Blue Thunder, a John Badham film about a fictitious technologically advanced prototype attack helicopter which was to be used as 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.

Among his most 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 Iron Cross, which is in post-production.


Other Work
In 1993, Scheider signed on to be the 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 exit 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 (musical guest: Billy Ocean) 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 in broadcast). Scheider guest-starred in sixth-season episode "Endgame" of Law & Order: Criminal Intent as serial-killer death-row-inmate Mark Ford Brady, a crucial role in that the character Brady is later revealed to be the father of one of the series' central characters; it was also Scheider's last television credit.

Scheider narrated and served as 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. (Academy Award winner Patricia Neal was the recipient of the other.)


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


Death
In 2004, Scheider was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. In June 2005, he underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat the cancer which was classified as being in partial remission. Scheider died on February 10, 2008 in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Hospital. Though a cause of death was not immediately released, Scheider's wife attributed her husband's death to complications from a staph infection.



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) (Television 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) (Television Movie)
Blue Thunder (1983)
Tiger Town (1983)
2010 (1984)
The Men's Club (1986)
The Egg's Sunset on the Upside Down Turned Ramp (1986)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Cohen and Tate (1988)
Listen to Me (1989)
Night Game (1989)
The Fourth War (1989)
The Russia House (1990)
Somebody has to Shoot the Picture (1990)
Naked Lunch (1991)
Wild Justice (1993)
seaQuest DSV (1993) (Television 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)
White Raven (1998)
Silver Wolf (1998)(Television Movie)
Evasive Action (1998)
Better Living (1998)
The Seventh Scroll (1999) (Television Mini-Series)
RKO 281 (1999)
Chain of Command (2000)
Falling Through (2000)
Daybreak (2000)
The Doorway (2000)
Time Lapse (2001)
Diamond Hunters (2001) (Television Movie)
Red Serpent (2002)
King of Texas (2002) (Television Movie)
Third Watch (2002) (Television Series)
Regulus: The First Nuclear Missile Submarines (2002)
Texas 46 (2002) aka The Good War (USA)
A Decade Under the Influence (2003)
Citizen Verdict (2003)
Dracula II: Ascension (2003)
The Punisher (2004)
Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
Carrier: Arsenal of the Sea (2005)
The Shark is Still Working (2006)
Last Chance (2006) (Short)
Law and Order: Criminal Intent (2007) (Television Series)
The Poet (2007)
If I Didn't Care (2007)
Chicago 10 (2007)
Family Guy (2007)
Dark Honeymoon (2008) (completed)
Iron Cross (2009) (in post-production)