Roy Scheider has died!

[Raph's Girl]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080211/...bit_scheider_2

Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," has died. He was 75.

Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release his cause of death.

Gah...Loved him in Jaws and Seaquest.... Wonder if Discovery channel will do something in his honour during Shark Week?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/mo...1scheider.html

Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.

Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.

Mr. Scheider’s rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.

Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like “Klute” (1971), his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda’s New York call girl; and in William Friedkin’s “French Connection” (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman’s marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.

Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”

His professional debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Romeo and Juliet.” While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in “The Curse of the Living Corpse” (1964), a low-budget horror film by the prolific schlockmeister Del Tenney. “He had to bend his knees to die into a moat full of quicksand up in Connecticut,” recalled Ms. Seimer, a documentary filmmaker. “He loved to demonstrate that.”

In 1977 Mr. Scheider worked with Mr. Friedkin again in “Sorcerer,” a big-budget remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 French thriller, “The Wages of Fear,” about transporting a dangerous load of nitroglycerine in South America.

Offered a leading role in “The Deer Hunter” (1979), Mr. Scheider had to turn it down in order to fulfill his contract with Universal for a sequel to “Jaws.” (The part went to Robert De Niro.)

“Jaws 2” failed to recapture the appeal of the first film, but Mr. Scheider bounced back, accepting the principal role in Bob Fosse’s autobiographical phantasmagoria of 1979, “All That Jazz.” Equipped with Mr. Fosse’s Mephistophelean beard and manic drive, Mr. Scheider’s character, Joe Gideon, gobbled amphetamines in an attempt to stage a new Broadway show while completing the editing of a film (and pursuing a parade of alluring young women) — a monumental act of self-abuse that leads to open-heart surgery. This won Mr. Scheider an Academy Award nomination in the best actor category. (Dustin Hoffman won that year, for “Kramer vs. Kramer.”)

In 1980, Mr. Scheider returned to his first love, the stage, where his performance in a production of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” opposite Blythe Danner and Raul Julia earned him the Drama League of New York award for distinguished performance. Although he continued to be active in films, notably in Robert Benton’s “Still of the Night” (1982) and John Badham’s action spectacular “Blue Thunder” (1983), he moved from leading men to character roles, including an American spy in Fred Schepisi’s “Russia House” (1990) and a calculating Mafia don in “Romeo Is Bleeding” (1993).

One of the most memorable performances of his late career was as the sinister, wisecracking Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” (1991).

Living in Sag Harbor, Mr. Scheider continued to appear in films and lend his voice to documentaries, becoming, Ms. Seimer said, increasingly politically active. With the poet Kathy Engle, he helped to found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, dedicated to creating an innovative, culturally diverse learning environment for local children. At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.

Besides his wife, his survivors include three children, Christian Verrier Scheider and Molly Mae Scheider, with Ms. Seimer, and Maximillia Connelly Lord, from an earlier marriage, to Cynthia Bebout; a brother, Glenn Scheider of Summit, N.J.; and two grandchildren.

[Jo Dawn]

Oh... wow. This really depresses me. Almost as much as when Jonathan Brandis died. (But I was gonna marry him, you know...) Especially since that kinda cancer runs rampant in my family. He ruled. Blessings and condolences to his family.

[ThirdMarioBro]

Roy Scheider was awesome. I'll miss him.

[Voltron]

Roy Scheider died? This bites.

[Warhorse]

I'll miss him. And I loved Seaquest! Great show. Captain Nathan Bridger and Darwin were the best!

RIP!

[Jo Dawn]

Originally Posted by Warhorse

I'll miss him. And I loved Seaquest! Great show. Captain Nathan Bridger and Darwin were the best!

You take that back. Lucas Wolenczak was the bomb, my friend. (And if I spelled that right from memory, I rule.)

[Warhorse]

Originally Posted by Jo Dawn

You take that back. Lucas Wolenczak was the bomb, my friend. (And if I spelled that right from memory, I rule.)

He was a cute kid, but I actually liked Johnathan Ford who was played by Don Franklin the best really. I actually got the first season on dvd. It is really one of the best sci fi shows of recent memory. Shame that the mass audience didn't seem to catch on to it.

But this show is also one of the reasons I got into electronics. Thought it would be cool to help design and work on a moving underwater city!

[Jo Dawn]

I went to buy the season DVD right after it came out and it was sold out. Haven't seen it since.

I'll have to look again soon.

[Warhorse]

I got mine through Columbia House TV. Anything online should have it, and the series is relatively cheap, compared to something like the X Files, Homicide or The Sopranos.

And Hitchcock was cool too!