1. Roy Richard Scheider was an American actor and amateur boxer who achieved fame with his leading and supporting roles in celebrated films from the 1970s through to the mid-1980s.
42 Facts About Roy Scheider
1. 2.
Roy Scheider was nominated for two Academy Awards, one Golden Globe, and one BAFTA.
3.
Roy Scheider's mother was of Irish descent with an Irish Catholic background, while his father was a Protestant German American.
4.
Roy Scheider competed in the Diamond Gloves Boxing Tournament in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
5.
Roy Scheider attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, graduating in 1950, and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1985.
6.
Roy Scheider traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers University and Franklin and Marshall College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
7.
Between 1946 and 1949, Roy Scheider boxed as an amateur in New Jersey.
8.
Roy Scheider said in a television interview in the 1980s that he took up boxing to lose weight.
9.
Roy Scheider said he had no desire to fight, but that his trainer, Georgie Ward, encouraged him to compete.
10.
Roy Scheider served three years in the United States Air Force as a first lieutenant in air operations from 1955 to 1958.
11.
Roy Scheider then became a captain in the Air Force Reserve Command until 1964.
12.
Roy Scheider was in the TV movie Lamp at Midnight.
13.
In 1968, Roy Scheider appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance in James Joyce's play Stephen D, appearing in it 68 times at the East 74th Street Theater.
14.
Roy Scheider appeared in the films Stiletto, Loving, and Puzzle of a Downfall Child, and on television in Where the Heart Is and Cannon.
15.
Roy Scheider went to Europe to have key supporting roles in The French Conspiracy and The Outside Man.
16.
Roy Scheider's first starring role came in The Seven-Ups, a quasi follow-up to The French Connection, in which Roy Scheider's character is based on Grosso.
17.
Roy Scheider was second-billed in Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York.
18.
Roy Scheider portrayed Chief Martin Brody in the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws, which starred Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.
19.
Roy Scheider's ad-libbed line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," was voted 35th on the American Film Institute's list of best movie quotes.
20.
Roy Scheider appeared as secret agent Doc Levy in Marathon Man, with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.
21.
Roy Scheider was initially set to appear in the lead role in Michael Cimino's never-filmed romantic thriller Perfect Strangers, but the film was canceled due to "political machinations" at Paramount.
22.
Ironically, Roy Scheider was later offered the role portrayed by Robert De Niro in Cimino's The Deer Hunter, which was the second film of a three-picture deal with Universal Studios.
23.
Roy Scheider reunited with French Connection director William Friedkin in Sorcerer, the second adaptation of the 1950 French novel The Wages of Fear.
24.
Roy Scheider starred in Last Embrace, a thriller directed by Jonathan Demme.
25.
Roy Scheider received his second Academy Award nomination, this time as Best Actor in All That Jazz, in which he played a fictionalized version of the film's director and co-writer Bob Fosse.
26.
Roy Scheider made a thriller with Meryl Streep for Robert Benton, Still of the Night, which was a box-office disappointment.
27.
Roy Scheider made two TV movies, Jacobo Timerman: Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number and Tiger Town.
28.
Roy Scheider provided narration for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.
29.
Roy Scheider was in The Men's Club, 52 Pick-Up for John Frankenheimer, Cohen and Tate, Listen to Me, Night Game, The Fourth War again for Frankenheimer, Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture, and The Russia House.
30.
Roy Scheider appeared among an ensemble cast in The Myth of Fingerprints, for which he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
31.
Roy Scheider appeared as the crusty father of hero Frank Castle in The Punisher, and in 2007, starred in The Poet and If I Didn't Care.
32.
When Roy Scheider died in February 2008, he had two movies upcoming: Dark Honeymoon, which had been completed, and the thriller Iron Cross.
33.
In Iron Cross, Roy Scheider plays the leading role of Joseph, a holocaust survivor with a propensity for justice, which was inspired by director Joshua Newton's late father Bruno Newton.
34.
Roy Scheider was lead star in the Steven Spielberg-produced television series seaQuest DSV as Captain Nathan Bridger.
35.
Roy Scheider's comments were highly publicized, and the media criticized him for panning his own show.
36.
NBC made additional casting and writing changes in the third season, and Roy Scheider decided to leave the show.
37.
Roy Scheider's contract required that he make several guest appearances that season.
38.
Roy Scheider provided voiceover on the Family Guy episode "Three Kings", which featured his Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss.
39.
Roy Scheider narrated and was associate producer of the 2006 Jaws documentary The Shark is Still Working.
40.
In 2007, Roy Scheider received one of two annual Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SunDeis Film Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts.
41.
On February 11,1989, he married actress Brenda Siemer, with whom he had a son, Christian Roy Scheider, and adopted a daughter, Molly.
42.
Roy Scheider died of a staph infection after a nearly 3 year battle with the cancer on February 10,2008, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.