New Hollywood mainstay Roy Scheider succumbed to a long battle with melanoma today at the age of 76. Like his co-stars Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfus, Scheider benefited from a desire to see "real looking" people on the screen. His air of reason and common decency made even his most bizarre and strange characters seem understandable, as if underneath they were grounded in some middle-American decency. After paying his dues in 60s TV, he took starring turns for Spielberg (Jaws), Friedkin (The French Connection, Sorcerer), and Fosse (All That Jazz). Twice Oscar nominated- Best Supporting Actor for The French Connection and Best Actor for All That Jazz- Schieder retreated largely to television work in the last two decades after his heyday in the 70s.The ultimate Scheider role was of course as Chief Martin Brody in Jaws. (The less said about Jaws 2 , the better.) The Chief is the stand-in for the audience; he's as bewildered ("They don't even know how old these things are!") and scared ("We're gonna need a bigger boat.") as we are, making him our point of identification. Hooper (Dreyfuss), the manic liberal intellectual is a font of shark exposition and Quint (Robert Shaw), the Ahab-like right-wing he-man, is insane. Scheider wisely underplays, giving us one of the most memorable characters in the cinema. Plus, he ad-libbed one of the greatest lines in cinema history.
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