Scheider earned two Academy Award nominationsfor his work in The French Connection and All That Jazz.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFRoy Scheider 88(photo credit: Courtesy)
Roy Scheider, a one-time boxer whose broken nose and pugnacious acting style made him a star in The French Connection and who later uttered one of cinematic history's most memorable lines in 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 a cause of death, but Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.
Scheider earned two Academy Award nominations - a best-supporting nod for 1971's The French Connection in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and a best-actor nomination for 1979's All That Jazz, the semi-autobiographical Bob Fosse film.
But he was perhaps best known for his role as a small-town police chief in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws, about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers - as well as millions of moviegoers.
In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from US movies.