Described by AllMovie as "one of the most unique and distinguished of all Hollywood actors",[1] he achieved fame with his leading and supporting roles in celebrated films from the 1970s through to the mid-1980s.

[2] Scheider's best-known roles include Frank Ligourin in Klute (1971), Martin Brody in Jaws (1975) and its 1978 sequel, "Cloudy" Russo in The French Connection (1971), "Buddy" in The Seven-Ups (1973), Doc Levy in Marathon Man (1976), Scanlon / Dominguez in Sorcerer (1977), Joe Gideon in All That Jazz (1979), Murphy in Blue Thunder (1983), and Dr. Heywood Floyd in the 2001: A Space Odyssey sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984).

[4][5] As a child, Scheider was an athlete, participating in organized baseball and boxing competitions, for which he was classed as a welterweight, weighing in at 140 lb (63.5 kg).

He traded his boxing gloves for the stage, studying drama at both Rutgers University and Franklin and Marshall College, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

The latter, in which he played a fictionalized version of New York City detective Sonny Grosso, gained him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Scheider portrayed Chief Martin Brody in the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws (1975), which also starred Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.

[3] Scheider's ad-libbed line,[11] "You're gonna need a bigger boat," was voted 35th on the American Film Institute's list of best movie quotes.

[12] Scheider was initially set to appear in the lead role in Michael Cimino's never-filmed romantic thriller Perfect Strangers, but the film was canceled due to "political machinations" at Paramount.

Scheider was later offered the role portrayed by Robert De Niro in Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), which was the second film of a three-picture deal with Universal Studios.

Still under contract after dropping out two weeks before The Deer Hunter started filming, Universal offered him the option of reprising his role as Martin Brody for a Jaws sequel, and would consider his contractual obligations fulfilled if he accepted.

He received his second Academy Award nomination, this time as Best Actor in All That Jazz (1979), in which he played a fictionalized version of the film's director and co-writer Bob Fosse.

The following year, however, his box office performance improved with Blue Thunder (1983),[3] a John Badham film about a prototype attack helicopter that provided security over the city of Los Angeles during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games.

[3] Scheider played a mob boss who meets a horrific fate in the Gary Oldman crime film Romeo Is Bleeding (1994)[3] and a chief executive of a corrupt insurance company cross-examined by Matt Damon's character in 1997's John Grisham's The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Scheider was lead star in the Steven Spielberg-produced television series seaQuest DSV as Captain Nathan Bridger.

He provided voiceover on the Family Guy episode "Three Kings" (which was recorded in September 2007 but aired in May 2009, a year and three months after his death in February 2008), which also featured his Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss.