Want to know the best Roy Scheider movies? How about the worst Roy Scheider movies? Curious about Roy Scheider’s box office grosses or which Roy Scheider movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Roy Scheider movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Roy Scheider (1932-2008) was an American 2-time Oscar® nominated actor. His IMDb page shows 89 acting credits from 1951-2009. This page ranks Roy Scheider movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, and movies not released in North America were not included in the rankings.
This Roy Scheider page comes from a request made many moons ago from Mckbirdbks. Mckbirdbks has been sharing and tweeting our movie pages for years now. So how do we repay him? By sitting on his Scheider request for years! Well no more! Finally…his Roy Scheider page is complete. And I am sharing the link to his very useful Mockingbird-Books website. You can buy used books there, get E-Book cover designs and much much more. Sorry for the delay Mike….and many many thanks for all of the support.
Roy Scheider Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Roy Scheider Movies Can Be Ranked 7 Ways In The Following Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Roy Scheider movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Roy Scheider movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Roy Scheider movies by domestic yearly box office rank or by trivia for that movie
- Sort Roy Scheider movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Roy Scheider movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Roy Scheider movie won.
- Sort Roy Scheider movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Roy Scheider
1. Roy Richard Scheider was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1932.
2. Roy Scheider was an amateur boxer from 1946 to 1949. Scheider broke his nose in his second fight….which was his only loss. He finished his boxing career with 10 straight knockout wins and an overall 13-1 record. He traded in his boxing gloves to become an actor.
3. Roy Scheider was nominated for two Oscars®: Best Supporting Actor for 1971’s The French Connection and Best Actor for 1979’s All That Jazz.. He received one Golden Globe® nomination: Best Actor for 1979’s All That Jazz.
4. Roy Scheider helped Jane Fonda in 1971’s Klute (he played her former pimp) and Gene Hackman in 1971’s The French Connection (he played his cop partner) win their Best Actress and Best Actor Oscars®. Makes us wonder how many times that has happened in the same year before and since.
5. Roy Scheider starred in the Steven Spielberg produced television show, Sea Quest 2032 from 1993 to 1995.
6. Roy Scheider’s career can be broken down into three parts: From 1951 to 1970 he was a struggling actor appearing in television shows and low budgeted barely seen movies. From 1971 to 1984 he was one of the most successful actors working…in our ranking equation 9 of his Top 10 movies were during this time span. From 1985 to 2008 he was back to low budget movies that barely reached theaters and mostly fell into the straight to home entertainment category.
7. Roy Scheider was married 2 times and had three children….two daughters and a son. His son, Christian Scheider is an actor and composer. His grandkids called him “Chiefy” and “Grandpa Chief Fish”.
8. Roy Scheider worst career decision? He was originally cast in the Robert DeNiro role in 1978’s The Deer Hunter, as the second movie of a three movie deal with Universal Studios. Because he did not believe that the character would travel around the world to find his friend, he quit the picture. Universal executives were furious, but they agreed to let him out of his Universal contract if he made 1978’s Jaws 2, which he did. He later regarded pulling out of The Deer Hunter as the career decision he most regrets.
9. Roy Scheider’s line “You’re going to need a bigger boat” from 1975’s Jaws is AFI’s 35th greatest movie quote of all-time! AFI’s Top 100 Movie Quotes.
10. Check out Roy Scheider‘s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Check out Steve Lensman’s Roy Scheider You Tube Video
For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
Despite its relative brevity my personal satisfaction rating for your Scheider video is 97.5%. You and The Big Boy agree on 5 of Roy’s top 6 best reviewed flicks. WH includes in his 6 The Rainnmaker whereas you go for Sorcerer. I loved The Rainmaker and have not seen Sorcerer so I cannot contradict The Work Horse’s choice. However I liked it that your Sorcerer poster pays tribute to the fact that the film is a remake of the 1953 classic French/Italian movie Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear [La Salaire De La Peur] starring Yves Montand and regarded as a very “left wing” film.
BEST STILLS [MY POSTERS LISTINGS ARE IN PART 3]
1/4th War
2/Jaws 2
3/Still of the Night
4/52 Pick Up
5/Blue Thunder
6/first one for 2010-Roy’s final big hit.
7/Naked Lunch
8/Sorcerer
9/Klute
10/French Connection
11/All that Jazz
12/Closing one for Jaws
Like most people I suppose I always think of Jaws when Roy’s name is mentioned but Bruce’s table above shows clearly that between 1971 and 1984 Roy was in 8 movies overall that crashed the Cogerson magical $100 million barrier in adjusted domestic receipts and their combined total in that respect was some $2.5 billion – an average of around $315 million per movie.
After the year 1984 the box office magic deserted him and his subsequent 15 movies did not even collectively reach that average gross of $315 million that the earlier big 8 had enjoyed. The 15 had an overall adjusted US gross of a mere $250 million – a paltry average of around $17 million per movie. .
In tandem with his big screen career Roy appeared in 27 television productions between 1955 and his death in 2008 when he left behind a net worth equivalent to around $18 million in today’s money.
THE JAWS FRANCHISE: COGERSON ADJUSTED US GROSSES
1975 Jaws [Scheider/Shaw/Dreyfus] $1.17 billion
1978 Jaws 2 [Scheider] $303 million
1983 Jaws 3 [Dennis Quaid] $132 million
1987 Jaws 4 [Sir Maurice Micklewhite] $49 million
“I’ve never seen Jaws 4 but I’ve seen the house it paid for!” – Sir Maurice.
HI BRUCE
1 As you have indicated above Roy’s career was relatively short at its peak with its best years being from around 1971-1984 He was an excellent actor but despite his Oscar nominations for All that Jazz and French Connection he will probably be most associated in audiences’ minds with Police Chief Brody in the first two Jaws movies.
2 In Jaws 1 he received decent enough reviews but one critic said of him in Jaws 2 that he seemed to spend endless lengths of time doing little but staring out to sea with nervous eyes. My two favourite Scheider movies after Jaws and French Connection were Last Embrace and Still of the Night though neither does well in the table above.
3 Before the opening of Jaws 4 The Revenge [“This time it’s personal”] Chief Brody dies of a heart attack off screen and in the 4th movie Sir Maurice Micklewhite courts Brody’s widow.played in the series by Lorraine Gary Sir M said in an interview that he had never seen Jaws 4 but “I’ve seen the house it paid for.”
4 By the way I was aware of Sir M’s 2 supporting Oscars but I always felt that he should have received a best actor Oscar and by listing him as 14th greatest actor of all time IMDB obviously agrees with me and are in effect saying that he is up there with Larry, Nicholson, Mr Mumbles, DeNiro and the rest as regards acting skills – as he is in my view. Thanks also for the Lansbury explanation. Your legion of followers will be relieved you haven’t made a glaring error – but darn it you’ve killed off at a stroke the further jokes I had lined up on the subject!
Hey Bob
1. Thanks for checking out our Roy Scheider update.
2. I agree with you….despite his Oscar nominated performances….he will always be Chief Brody.
3. Pretty sure he was not happy about having to do Jaws 2…and I think it shows in his performance.
4. I have not seen either The Last Embrace or Still of the Night…..though I want to….plus Sorceror is also on my list of Roy movies to see.
5. I love that line from Caine on Jaws 4….a truly horrible movie.
6. I love Caine….not sure he is up there in 14th place….but I am glad others think so highly of him.
7. Sorry I killed your jokes…just explaining why Lansbury made that co-star column.
Good feedback…as always.
BRUCE
1 The only movies I can remember seeing Angela Lansbury in are when she was very young and played supporting roles in the 1945 Picture of Dorian Gray and the 1955 A Lawless Street starring Randolph Scott.
2 However I never saw the first time round Angela’s enormously successful TV series Murder She Wrote (1984-1996) and am now watching a re-run of the entire series and am quite impressed with her. I will though keep firmly in mind that you spotted her first just as my brother in Australia claims to have found Russell Crowe before anyone else.
3 I mentioned before that there are so many ‘has beens’ in Murder She Wrote that it could be mistaken for an A C Lyles production. A 1986 episode that I have just watched was like a ‘ships that pass in the night’ of actors with on the way in a 30 year old Bryan [Trumbo] Cranston and on the way out the veteran 70 year old Van Johnson.
4 Sorcerer is of course a remake of the 1953 French classic The Wages of Fear starring Yves Montand. The remake is considered inferior but IMDB agrees with you that it is nonetheless a good film. However it was not a big hit and the director William Friedkin said that casting Roy Scheider was “The biggest mistake I ever made”. He had approached in turn McQueen, Newman, Eastwood and Nicholson. McQueen as usual had made unacceptable demands this time insisting that his then wife Ali McGraw be given a part in the movie. Ironic given that the following year Steve and Ali divorced.
Hey Bob.
1. Angela Lansbury is one of the last stars to be connected to the golden era of movies….just some of her co-stars…..Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lana Turner….are impressive.
2. I will gladly take credit for her….lol.
3. Funny and interesting comments about Murder She Wrote.
4. Good information on Sorceror….I have a friend that lists it among the best movies ever….yet I can never find it to see it.
Good feedback.
Hey Steve. I was right there with you about Scheider when he passed away. Jaws was and is one of my favorite movies of all-time. WE are getting old. I remember being in school and hearing everybody talking about the movie. Living near the Atlantic Ocean (12 miles away) I had not interest in seeing a shark eating people….but we I finally saw it….the movie blew me away. No matter how many times I see it…it still keeps me fascinated.
My tally is 13….Flora is at 4…..so that puts us in a tie. I have wanted to see Sorceror for a very long time now….somehow it has escaped me. I think The Deer Hunter would have been a much different movie if Scheider had the DeNiro role….makes you wonder. Thanks for the vote up and the comment….they are both greatly appreciated.
I was sad and shocked when Roy Scheider died a few years ago, just wasn’t expecting it. He was the star of Jaws, which was my all time favorite movie for a while. I must have seen it at least a dozen times at the cinema 40 years ago! Jeez I’m getting old. Jaws opened in December 1975 here in the UK.
I’ve seen 13 of the 30 films you’ve listed, I was expecting more. Jaws beaten to no.1 on the UMR chart by The French Connection… hmm. Good film and it did win Best Picture, I forgive you. 🙂
Other favorites include Blue Thunder, 2010 and Marathon Man. I watched a nicely restored copy of Sorcerer recently. William Friedkin says it’s his favorite of the films he directed but I didn’t much care for it. The Exorcist was his magnum opus.
I still haven’t seen All That Jazz, for some reason that film passed me by all these years.
I didn’t know he was up for the lead in The Deer Hunter, interesting, now of course I can’t imagine anyone but De Niro in that role.
A nice tribute to one of the modern greats. Voted up.