Roy Story: Becoming Roy Scheider
With his distinctive sharp features, Roy Scheider always made a lasting impression on screen.
And who could forget his delivery perfection in one of the most iconic lines uttered in the history of movies; “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”, from Jaws (1975).
Now, almost 15 years after his death, Roy Scheider is set to deliver one final performance in Beautiful Blue Eyes, which is released Spetember 9th 2022.
We all know the Scheider of Jaws, its sequel Jaws 2 (1978), All That Jazz (1979), Blue Thunder (1983) and SeaQuest DSV for TV (1993), but what about his formative years?
The future Jaws actor was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1932. His dad, also called Roy, was a motor mechanic, probably meaning he was never too fah from a cah. Not that the young Roy had much opportunity to play in the yahd, as he was a poorly child.
For years he suffered from recurring bouts of rhematic fever, leaving him bed bound for large chunks of him growing up. Scheider would put that time to good use and escape into the world of books, which he swallowed whole.
Perhaps that explains that, when he was given a clean bill of health at age 17, save for a heart murmur, he threw himself into sports in high school. He had a strong physique – put to good use years later on Jaws when he’s have push-up challenges with Richard Dreyfuss – and was a baseball player and a amateur boxer.
Perhaps he was making up lost time from when he was unable to leave his bed and go outside? The young Roy Scheider fought nine times as an amateur in the ring, and lost one boxing match in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. That fight may have broken his nose, but it gave us the classic Roy Scheider look and character that we know and love.
Roy Scheider starred in Harold Pinter's Betrayal
University beckoned, were Scheider completed a history major and then went in to the air force for three years. After that, he was looking at pursuing a career in law, before he decided to try his hand at theatre, after featuring in several college productions.
His professional stage debut as an actor took place in 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet, playing Mercutio. Years later he’d feature in the film Romeo Is Bleeding.
Soon television roles would follow, before he got his first film role, a low budget drive in horror film called The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964).
Just seven years later he would receive his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in The French Connection, opposite Gene Hackman, and four years from that would ask about the possibility of getting that bigger boat in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
It would become the then highest grossing film of all time, a cultural phenomenon, and a breakout role for Scheider based on a best-selling book, that for a kid who spent many of his formative years reading, seems most fitting.
Words by Dean Newman
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