Roy Scheider, a leading player in the 1970s American film renaissance, died of complications from a staph infection at the age of 75 on Sunday afternoon. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, for several years and the actor had been treated there for the disease off and on over the past two years.
While best-known as Martin Brody, the intrepid, yet agonized family man police chief in Stephen Speilberg’s “Jaws,” our favorite Scheider roles were his performances in Bob Fosse’s incredible pill-popping quasi-bio, “All That Jazz,” and William Friedkin’s ill-received and commercially disastrous (yet underrated) follow-up to “The Excorcist” – the remake of Henri Georges Clouziot’s 1953 film “The Wages of Fear” – 1977’s “Sorcerer” (itself eerily scored by German electronic group Tangerine Dream)
Scheider’s other well-known and excellent roles include in “The French Connection,” “Klute” and “Marathon Man” though anyone who grew up with “Jaws” as a child probably has a soft-spot for him (we sure do).
His most memorable late-career performance was probably was as Dr. Benway in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” in 1991.
The classically-trained actor was nominated for two Academy Awards, one in 1972 for Best Supporting Actor in The “French Connection,” and another in 1980 for Best Actor in a Leading Role in “All The Jazz.” The NYTimes has a good obit you should read for more in-depth reading. RIP.
Watch: ‘Hospital Hallucinations’ Scene – “All That Jazz”
Watch: ‘Showtime’ Scene – “All That Jazz”
Watch: ‘Journey’ Scene – “Sorcerer”
Watch: ‘Pleading Their Case’ Scene – “The French Connection”
