Gene Seymour, Newsday
12:15 AM EST, February 11, 2008
Roy Scheider, a two-time Academy Award nominee best remembered as the reluctant, shark-hunting police chief in “Jaws,” died yesterday. He was 75 years old and lived in Sag Harbor.
Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for years and died in Little Rock, Ark., from a staph infection, according to his wife, Brenda Seimer.
Outside of his film career, Scheider was active in East End causes, helping co-found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, which is dedicated to creating a progressive, culturally diverse educational environment for local children. Scheider “was deeply committed to the school in every way,” said Jonathan Snow, another of the school’s founders.
He was also a regular participant in the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game, a star-studded event peopled by summering celebrities in East Hampton that raised money for a variety of local charities.
Born in Orange, N.J., Scheider was athletically gifted, specializing in organized baseball and boxing. He studied drama at both Rutgers and Franklin and Marshall College. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he made his mark on Off-Broadway and in TV roles.
Scheider’s taut physique, authoritative speaking voice and openhearted demeanor combined to make him a welcome presence on stage and screen, whether in lead or supporting roles. Mostly, he was known for playing tough, honorable cops, such as the beleaguered Martin Brody, chief of police for a Massachusetts island community terrorized by a great white shark in the 1975 blockbuster “Jaws.”
He repeated the role in the inevitable, far less successful 1978 sequel, “Jaws 2.”
He was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar in 1971 for “The French Connection,” in which he played New York police detective Buddy Russo, cocky partner to Gene Hackman’s high-strung Popeye Doyle. His second nomination was for best actor in the offbeat role as the dying, dream-haunted choreographer Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse’s 1979 autobiographical musical, “All That Jazz.”
Scheider brought grit, grace and a modicum of hard-won worldliness to his heroic roles, whether he was a high-tech chopper pilot in “Blue Thunder” (1984), a space scientist in “2010” (1984) or a blackmail victim in “52 Pickup” (1986). Later roles, such as the sinister Dr. Benway in 1991’s “Naked Lunch,” were less stalwart.
His witty turn as an East End lawman in this year’s “If I Didn’t Care” proved he could serve up a good, quirky cop role.
Scheider is also survived by his children, Maximilla, Christian and Molly.
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