Roy Scheider, 75, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie Jaws, died on February 10, 2008.

The movie brought to the fore the notion that cryptid Megalodons (Carcharodon megalodon) might still be waiting out there in the oceans of the world, ready to be found anew. Megalodon, the 70 foot, 40 ton prehistoric cousin of the great white shark, were seen as even more scary after Jaws set up all large sharks as tooth-laden swimming demons. (Opinions about sharks have shifted back to conservation, but 1975 is the watershed year in increasing shark interest and awareness.)

Certainly, sharks ~ monster ones and otherwise ~ were redisovered cinematically via Jaws. Scheider’s common man role represented us all. He wasn’t a scientist, he wasn’t a shark hunter, he was merely your local neighborhood cop, out of his element on a boat.

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.

The following is a video with the scene including Roy Scheider saying that famed line:

Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock. He had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.

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.

But Roy Scheider will always be best known for that role he played so humbly in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film, Jaws, the famed classic about a giant killer shark terrorizing beachgoers and well as millions of filmgoers.

Born in 1932 in Orange, New Jersey, Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennslyvania, where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”

His pro acting debut was as Mercutio in a 1961 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “Romeo and Juliet.” While continuing to work onstage, he made his movie debut in The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964), a low-budget horror film by the prolific schlockmeister Del Tenney. “He had to bend his knees to die into a moat full of quicksand up in Connecticut,” recalled a documentary filmmaker. “He loved to demonstrate that.”

Living in Sag Harbor, New York, Scheider was a friendly and casual neighbor. His family and friends will miss him deeply.