Roy Scheider
Born: November 10 1932
Where: Orange, New Jersey, USA
Died: February 10 2008 Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
The twice Oscar-nominated actor was best known for the role of Chief Martin Brody in Steven Spielberg's Jaws.
The son of a car mechanic, Scheider was a keen athlete as a youngster, participating in baseball and boxing competitions.
He attended Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1985.
He traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers University and Franklin and Marshall College.
After three years in the United States Air Force, he appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival, and won an Obie Award in 1968.
After extensive work on stage throughout the 60s, Scheider shone in finely nuanced roles in Klute and The French Connection.
The latter earned him an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as Gene Hackman's partner.
He was on firm ground as the secret agent older brother of Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man but shouldn't have bothered to reprise the role of Brody in Jaws 2.
A convincing tough guy, he sweated manfully for Sorcerer, a miscalculated remake of The Wages of Fear.
Scheider finished off the 70s with an acclaimed portrayal of director Bob Fosse's alter ego in All That Jazz, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
By now he'd passed the highpoint of his career - but he could still impress, particularly as a psychiatrist who gets involved with Meryl Streep in Still of the Night.
He played a weathered cop in the high-tech police thriller Blue Thunder and Dr Floyd Heywood in 2010, the inadequate sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He also provided the English narration for Paul Schrader's stylized biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and performed similar chores on several TV documentaries.
Subseqent parts saw him playing supporting roles in the likes of The Russia House and Naked Lunch in 1991.
With his film career in marked decline, he took the plunge to series TV as the star of seaQuest DSV, which was executive produced by Steven Spielberg.
He continued to appear on the big screen, but in low-budget efforts such as Executive Target, Silver Wolf and Daybreak.
Recent notable appearances included the reality TV parody Citizen Verdict with Jerry Springer.
In 2004, Scheider was diagnosed with myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells and underwent a bone marrow transplant.
He died on February 10 2008, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
