HE WAS the screen everyman with the face of a pugilist, the mind of a scholar and the respect of his peers.
Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his turn as the pained police chief in Jaws, has died. He was 75.

One of the trailblazers of the American film renaissance in the 1970s, Scheider was twice nominated for an Oscar in a career which spanned Shakespearean productions and low-budget horror films.

His broken nose and pugnacious acting style made him an automatic choice when he happened to strike up conversation with a young director called Steven Spielberg, looking to cast his second feature film in 1975.

The role of Martin Brody, the police official harbouring the knowledge that a killer shark was preying on the shores of a island resort in New York state, allowed Scheider to cement his place in film immortality.

His line "You're gonna need a bigger boat" was voted decades later No 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes.

Blockbusters, however, were not Scheider's forte. He had earlier won plaudits from his peers in the acting profession for his turn as a pimp in Klute, and Gene Hackman's restrained partner in French Connection, the latter earned him a best supporting actor nomination.

"He was a wonderful guy. He was what I call a 'knockaround actor", said his Jaws co-star, Richard Dreyfuss. "A 'knockaround actor' to me is a compliment that means a professional that lives the life of a professional actor, and doesn't yell and scream at the fates, and does his job, and does it as well as he can."