1932–2008 · American actor · played Chief Martin Brody in Jaws (1975)
Roy Scheider was an American actor, twice Oscar-nominated (The French Connection, All That Jazz), who played Amity Island police chief Martin Brody in Jaws. He is named here for an unusual reason: this line has no author in the normal sense. Quotle's standing rule is that a screen line belongs to its writer, never its actor — but co-screenwriter Carl Gottlieb states plainly that this line was never in the script. It began as an on-set gripe about the production's undersized support boat, passed anonymously around the cast and crew, and Scheider ad-libbed it into the shark-reveal take. No single person is documented as coining the phrase; Scheider is simply the one who put it on film. Crediting Benchley or Gottlieb would be the misattribution.