US:The actor Roy Scheider, best remembered as the neurotic small-town police chief in Jaws, died on Sunday of complications from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells. He was 75.
Although Scheider had a distinguished career on stage and screen, he will be remembered for his performance in the film credited with launching the age of movie blockbusters. One of Scheider's lines from that film, "You're gonna need a bigger boat", regularly features on lists of the most memorable film quotes.
Richard Dreyfuss, who starred opposite Scheider in the film, paid tribute to him. "He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a knockaround actor," he told reporters.
"A knockaround actor to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor and doesn't yell and scream at the fates and does his job and does it as well as he can."
While his performance in Jaws brought him to a global audience, Scheider made his mark in films as Jane Fonda's pimp in the 1971 film Klute. The same year he appeared as Buddy Russo, tough guy partner to Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. He received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance, a role originally intended for Steve McQueen.
His second Oscar nomination - again for best supporting actor - came for the third performance to define his screen career, as a drug-fuelled Broad- way choreographer in Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. "I've been fortunate to do what I consider three landmark films," he said in 1986.
"The French Connection spawned a whole era of the relationship between two policemen, based on an enormous amount of truth about working on the job. Jaws was the first big, blockbuster outdoor-adventure film. And certainly All That Jazz is not like any old MGM musical. Each one of these films is unique, and I consider myself fortunate to be associated with them."
Scheider retained a love for the theatre. His college performance in Richard III was reviewed by the New York Times, capturing the attention of the legendary New York theatre impresario Joseph Papp. In the 1980s he returned to the New York theatre, winning awards for his performance in Harold Pinter's Betrayal.
He continued to work until last year, taking lead roles in two films due out this year. His final performance, fittingly, harks back to The French Connection: in Iron Cross he plays a retired New York detective involved in a foreign adventure.