RIP

I generally don't do the celebrity death tribute but I felt I had to acknowledge this one. Almost ever day for about 20 years, my father ate breakfast at our local diner. Roy Scheider would eat there as well. After a time, the 2 started realizing they were always there at the same time and started eating breakfast together. So, for many years...he was my father's breakfast companion. I didn't go for breakfast since I was in school but there were other times I went to the diner and I did meet him on occasion. He was a really nice man. My father always said wonderful things about him and really enjoyed his company so I read this news and broke it to my father. As expected, he was kinda upset by the news. So, his family are in my prayers and I hope he rests in peace.

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) -- Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," has died. He was 75.

Roy Scheider speaks at a gala in 2004. Scheider died Sunday at an Arkansas hospital.
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.

However, hospital
spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple
myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy
for the past two years.

Scheider received two Oscar nominations,
for best-supporting actor in 1971's "The French Connection" in which he
played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and for
best-actor for 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse
film.

However, he was best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's1975 film, "Jaws," the enduring classic about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers and well as millions of moviegoers.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood
blockbuster, it was also the first movie to earn $100 million at the
box office. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an
oceanographer.

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 U.S. movies.

That year, some 30 years after "Jaws" premiered, hundreds of movie
buffs flocked to Martha's Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of
Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark.

The island's
JawsFest '05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including
screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that
inspired Spielberg's classic. Spielberg, Scheider and Dreyfuss were
absent.

Scheider was also politically active. He participated in
rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive
New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000
chanting activists.
(from CNN.com)

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