Hollywood has lost another great star. This time it’s Roy Scheider, “Jaws’” unlikely shark slayer.

That’s right. Police Chief Martin Brody is no more, and hopefully headed to a spot that won’t require packing metal to bring down heaven’s mother of all sharks.

Like so many “Jaws” fans, I’ll never forget my first encounter with Hollywood’s first true movie blockbuster. It came when I was 12, during one summer when our neighbours left me in charge of cleaning their big, rambling pool.

I watched “Jaws” alone. No big deal I thought – even after I screamed at the sight of Scheider’s glazed, deadpan, boat-side terror at having tossed bait within an inch of this monster’s teeth.

It’s a fake shark I reasoned as I dove into the pool later that night. Why it even sank when Steven Spielberg tried to shoot with it I told myself as the quiet dusk suddenly filled with the eerie, sharky sound of the flapping pool filters.

With “Jaws’” theme pounding in my pre-teen ears, I flew out of that pool and tore home that night thinking of Roy Scheider. And when I finished huffing and puffing in my nice safe bedroom - grateful that I’d survived the  phantom pool filter shark - I thought of Roy Scheider some more.

Scheider put something extraordinary into quiet, ordinary Chief Brody - something that registered even with a mere kid like me. True, the shark was “Jaws’” big star. But Scheider’s “everyman” seaside officer was a revelation and his performance  filled me with the kind of dread, fear, terror you name it that I have yet to experience with any of Hollywood’s 21st-century horror-porn offerings.

Thanks to Scheider, Chief Brody took a chomp out of my mind that night, not to mention on pop culture for years to come. Why? Because in his quest to do the right thing in spite of his fear, Scheider’s man of law proved that no monster is as scary as what lurks within the human mind.
 
Yes, Scheider’s career spanned five decades and included such hits as “The French Connection” and “All that Jazz.”  But generations will remember him most for “Jaws,” not to mention his famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

“Jaws’” shark might have sank long ago. But Scheider and Chief Brody never will.