Roy Scheider Biography

Actor. Roy Richard Scheider was born November 10, 1932, into a working class family in Orange, New Jersey. He was stricken with rheumatic fever at six and spent long periods in bed, becoming a voracious reader. Except for a slight heart murmur, he was pronounced cured at 17.

As a child, Scheider participated in organized baseball and boxing competitions, attending Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. He earned a distinctive shape of his nose in an amateur boxing match at the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition.

Scheider traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school.

Scheider served three years in the U.S. Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall and caught the eye of a Broadway scout.

Scheider made his professional debut as Mercutio in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of >Romeo and Juliet.

His film debut came in The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964), a low-budget horror film. He also played minor roles in such films as Paper Lion (1968) and Stiletto (1969).

His breakthrough came in 1971 when he played Jane Fonda's pimp husband in Klute and Gene Hackman's police partner in French Connection. Scheider was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in French Connection, the first of two Oscar nominations. Scheider then got his first starring role in The Seven-Ups (1973), which featured spectacular car chase sequences.

Then Scheider got what became his best known part as the police chief of a New England resort town in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws. The film about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers was the first to gross more than $100 million and launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster. One of Scheider's most famous lines in Jaws, the ad-libbed "You're gonna need a bigger boat" when the shark reveals itself, was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from movies.

In 1976, Scheider appeared as secret agent Doc Levy in Marathon Man, with Dustin Hoffman (as his younger brother) and Laurence Olivier.

But Scheider had to pass on a part in the Oscar-winning Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter (the role went to Robert DeNiro) to fulfill a contractual obligation to reprise his role as Chief Brody in Jaws 2 (1978). Unfortunately, Jaws 2 turned out not to be as successful as the original.

Scheider came back in 1979 with a role that got him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He played a womanising choreographer and director in the semi-autobiographical Bob Fosse film All That Jazz.

In 1980, Scheider returned to the stage in Betrayal, earning the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance.