Playboy Interview: Roy Scheider

In the harsh morning light, Joe Gideon stumbles into the bathroom, wolfs down a fistful of amphetamines, lights a cigarette, switches on a classical cassette, stands motionless--helpless, really--waiting for the speed to take hold. In the shower, the spray plasters his hair against his forehead, but the cigarette continues to dangle from his lips. Later, shaved, hair combed, teeth brushed (but cigarette still dangling), Gideon auditions for himself in the bathroom mirror. He passes, casts himself to play the lead in his life for another day. He smiles, causing the cigarette to jump. Then he turns the palms of both hands up and over, his eyes dance merrily and he says, "It's showtime, folks!"

Thus begins every day for Joe Gideon, the obsessed, possessed, self-absorbed, self-destructive, extravagantly gifted, manically libidinous, workaholic director / choreographer / protagonist of "All That Jazz." Not so loosely based on the life of the film's co-author and director, Bob Fosse, "Jazz" won four Academy Awards, shared the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and will gross well over $50,000,000 world-wide in its first run. Yet despite all the acclaim and all the gossip the movie has generated--like most fictionalized autobiographies, it is also something of a roman à clef--in the end, "All That Jazz" will probably be remembered chiefly as the vehicle that launched Roy Scheider into superstardom. Which is curious, because Scheider is one of those movie stars who seem always to have been there--playing big, important roles in big, important pictures and garnering superb reviews, yet never quite capturing the imagination of the American public. He has always been recognized within his profession as an actor's actor, and some early critics theorized that the seamlessness and apparent effortlessness of Scheider's performances were actually serving to blunt his glamor--that he sometimes seemed almost too real. "In 'Jaws,' I was Everyman," Scheider recalls, "so people looked through me and saw themselves. In 'The French Connection,' many viewers thought I was a real cop, not an actor."

And when the scramble began for the leading roles in last year's most prestigious pictures, it appeared to be more of the same for Scheider--a few strong supporting roles and a plethora of lackluster leads. The two best parts of the year went to two of Scheider's old buddies: Dustin Hoffman got "Kramer vs. Kramer" and Richard Dreyfuss got "Jazz." But during preproduction on "Jazz," Dreyfuss and Fosse quarreled constantly. Nothing personal, just two uncompromising perfectionists unable to arrive at a common view of perfection. Eventually, Dreyfuss walked off the set--and directly to a phone booth to commiserate with an old pal, another notorious perfectionist who'd been known to walk off a few stages himself. "I just pulled a Roy Scheider," Dreyfuss said to Roy Scheider, who told Dreyfuss that if his artistic differences with Fosse were really that great, he'd probably done the right thing. It certainly turned out to be the right thing--for Scheider. Two weeks later, Fosse cast him to replace Dreyfuss in "Jazz." The rest, as they say, is movie history.

In 1935, Roy Scheider was born into a blue-collar German-American family in Orange, New Jersey. His father, an auto mechanic and part-time driving instructor, wanted something better for his son and decided, at least in part as a result of watching "Perry Mason" on TV, that law was it.

At six, Scheider was stricken with rheumatic fever and had to spend a year in bed. The illness continued to plague him throughout childhood and adolescence, resulting in two additional periods of extended bed rest at the ages of 12 and 16. During those long months of convalescence, Scheider became a voracious reader ("Books were my escape into a fantasy world outside the bedroom"). It was then that he evolved what he would later identify as his "actor's imagination." At 17, he was finally pronounced cured and, though left with a mild heart murmur, was given carte blanche to lead a normal life. "I began making up for lost time with a vengeance," is the way Scheider remembers those first few years out of bed. He began swimming, playing baseball, boxing and dating girls, all for the first time in his life. In his second bout in New Jersey's Diamond Belts competition, Scheider's now-famous nose was created by the fist of a young middleweight whose name has been lost to history. He did a little better than that with baseball and girls.

After college, success in student drama productions and a three-year stint in the Air Force, Scheider arrived in New York--complete with wife and children (hers)--in 1960, ready to begin a life in the theater. And for the next decade--that was exactly the life he lived. Scheider's first professional role was in a Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival production of "Romeo and Juliet," in which he played Mercutio and was understudied by James Earl Jones. After that, he alternated off-Broadway roles with engagements in various regional repertory companies. By the late Sixties, he had achieved broad recognition as one of this country's most accomplished young character actors. In 1971, Scheider successfully broke through in movies by supporting both of that year's Academy Award-winning lead performances--as Jane Fonda's pimp in "Klute" and as Gene Hackman's partner in "The French Connection"--while he himself garnered a supporting-actor nomination for "French Connection." Over the next seven years, Scheider extended his streak of rave reviews with films such as "The Seven-Ups," "Jaws," "Marathon Man" and "Sorcerer."

Then came "Jazz." Finally, at the age of 44, it had all been pulled together. The critical acclaim and the box-office receipts were at last connected in the popular consciousness with the name on the marquee--Roy Scheider had become an international superstar.

After "Jazz," Scheider returned to Broadway to do Harold Pinter's new play, "Betrayal," for which he won last season's Drama League of New York Award for the Most Distinguished Performance on the Stage. Scheider is in negotiation for his next film role, the part of Houdini in the long-awaited film version of E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime."

Roy, his second wife, Cynthia Bébout Scheider (a highly regarded film editor whose credits include "Breaking Away" and the forthcoming "Eyewitness"), and their 17-year-old daughter, Max, live in New York in the former Joseph Pulitzer mansion, which was recently converted into a co-op (the Scheiders' entire duplex apartment fits into what was once the music room). Last spring, we assigned New York journalist Sam Merrill (whose previous "Playboy Interviews" have been with Joseph Heller, Roone Arledge and Karl Hess) to cover Scheider through the Academy Awards and the completion of his Broadway run. Merrill reports:

"Roy Scheider lives a routine life in the most positive sense. He makes precise appointments, which he keeps precisely, and he expects others to do the same.

"At first, he and I met alone at a Greek diner and the sessions were always rewarding. But after a couple of weeks, we both felt that they began to run curiously downhill. We'd covered his early life and explored some anecdotes that illuminated various aspects of his career. Good, solid material, but something was missing. I couldn't figure out what it was, but Scheider knew instinctively: 'We need women,' he said simply at the end of our second week. And he was right. So we began augmenting our breakfasts with social occasions: seeing movies and meeting after the show for dinner; one night at Elaine's, another at Michael's Pub. 'I've never been what some people call a man's man,' Scheider confided during one of those evenings. 'To me, a night out with the boys is the pits. I'm a peacock and I think most men are. When women are around, the feathers unfurl.'

"Whatever was charging us, the interview proceeded faultlessly from there and even managed to end on a spontaneously festive note. Scheider had returned early from Cannes because of his Broadway commitment and was anxiously awaiting the results of the balloting when, on the morning of our final session, breakfast at the diner was interrupted by the triumphant entrance of Fosse and 20th Century-Fox president Sherry Lansing. 'Jazz' had won the Golden Palm less than 12 hours earlier and while European moguls were tripping over one another's checkbooks in a frenzied scramble for distribution rights, Fosse and Lansing had jumped onto the first plane to New York to tell Scheider. Naturally, they knew exactly where to find him. They even knew what he'd be eating for breakfast. Cheering broke out and startled bus boys looked up from their stations. The interview was abruptly transformed into a celebration. We had come full circle from our first day, when, sitting in the same booth, I'd asked Scheider for his initial impressions of Fosse's script."

[Q] Playboy: The first time you read the script for All That Jazz, did you feel, This is it, this is the part that's finally going to make me a major star?

[A] Scheider: The first time I read the script for Jazz, I found it outrageous, assaulting, highly melodramatic, very funny, stupid, silly, simplistic, vulgar--all those things. I knew it would be a wonderful movie. I also knew Bob Fosse would be a lucky son of a bitch to get it made. It was unlike almost anything I'd ever seen. I mean, it was a little like Catch-22, and also a little like The Ruling Class, in which Peter O'Toole played a Christ-like figure. But mostly, it was just ... unique. And I thought, Who the hell's going to give him money to do this?

[Q] Playboy: Did you think Jazz was a little too autobiographical, too self-indulgent?

[A] Scheider: No, because I didn't know Bob Fosse then, so I wasn't aware of the personal connections in the script.

[Q] Playboy: But you must be aware that certain people in the New York theatrical scene--people you later worked with on Broadway in Betrayal--felt that All That Jazz was really just a mean and gossipy roman à clef.

[A] Scheider: There's a lot of jealousy and competition among theatrical people, and their reaction was ... well, actually, they were fucking furious. Certain composers and lyricists Bobby had worked with felt they'd been parodied in the movie.

[Q] Playboy: Had they been?

[A] Scheider: Sure, to some extent. But most of the characters were composites, and the film is generally cynical about everything. But the reaction in New York was violent. The less people know about Bob, the less they look at the picture for its gossipy aspects.

[Q] Playboy: Your character, Joe Gideon--the Bob Fosse character----

[A] Scheider:Et tu, Playboy? You're really much better off just looking at it as a movie.

[Q] Playboy: But the film is at least semi-autobiographical for Fosse. Was it that way for you, too?

[A] Scheider: Yes, sure. This movie was, in a way, almost like a couch session for Bobby, and through the device of Joe Gideon, both of us pumped a lot of our anxieties and frustrations into the character.

[Q] Playboy: So, while making Jazz, you and Fosse discovered a great deal of common ground.

[A] Scheider: Bobby's often said one of the reasons he likes working with me is that he thinks I'm hungry. Every job, I've got to prove myself all over again. And he feels the same way. Whether it's Pippin or Sweet Charity or Cabaret--every time out of the chute, they're out to get you, so you've got to be better than you've ever been. You can't be just as good. Bobby talked a lot about "flop sweat," the fear of falling on your face in front of an audience, or simply not being able to get it up when you need it. That's an anxiety every human being has felt.

[Q] Playboy: Gideon is also a compulsive and sometimes self-destructive womanizer. Is that another "common ground" between you and Fosse?

[A] Scheider: Yes. I'm a guy who could say, "I never met a woman I didn't like." And Bobby hasn't met many he hasn't liked, either.

[Q] Playboy: But have you loved them?

[A] Scheider: I've been married for 18 years to a woman who is my lover, my best friend, my advisor, my confidante ... when something happens to me, it's almost as though it isn't real until I've shared it with Cynthia. But still....

[Q] Playboy: You're a womanizer?

[A] Scheider: It's sort of an unsaid understanding that when I'm away on location, I don't spend every night in my room, playing with myself.

[Q] Playboy: Are your affairs a bone of contention in your marriage?

[A] Scheider: It's something we used to discuss, but we dropped it a long time ago. Cynthia has, I suppose--I hope--achieved a certain feeling of security by now. She knows where she stands. If she ever felt threatened, that would be something else.

[Q] Playboy: When you return from several months on location, does Cynthia grill you about your sexual activities?

[A] Scheider: Not directly, but she's always breaking my balls about it in general. She teases me that when I hit 50, I'm going to run off with some dim-witted 19-year-old and make a complete fool of myself. She says, "You're going to look so silly, and I'll be laughing at you." It makes me think twice.

[Q] Playboy: But the problem remains that if you're a celebrity--especially a movie star--beautiful women really are throwing themselves at you almost constantly.

[A] Scheider: Isn't it awful?

[Q] Playboy: In a way, it may be, especially for a man like you. Your friends describe you as devoted to Cynthia and committed to that relationship--even though it's reported to be tempestuous. Yet there's also the man who "never met a woman he didn't like."

[A] Scheider: I think that's a particular problem males have--to be easily aroused. Just as I believe the desire for competitive athleticism is part of the survival mechanism in man, so are, I think, promiscuous sexual drives. But society has made all kinds of rules prohibiting us from obeying those impulses.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think women suffer as much as men do because of society's rules?

[A] Scheider: I don't believe most women are as quickly or as indiscriminately aroused as most men are. It is a peculiarly male problem to want to copulate with almost anything that moves. But, of course, women have the same promiscuous desires men have and current literature informs us that women lead at least as rich a fantasy life as men do. So, in that sense, they suffer more than men by society's rules because of the double standard. A guy can go out and fuck himself to death, and he's a hero. A girl does it, and she's a nymphomaniac. You figure it out.

[Q] Playboy: What if Cynthia had affairs while the two of you were separated. In your gut, would you feel differently about her promiscuity than about your own?

[A] Scheider: Yeah, because I've been conditioned to feel differently about it. I'd have no right to feel differently about it. And in the end, I'd just rather not know.

[Q] Playboy: Because you'd feel rejected?

[A] Scheider: Not if I wasn't around. I think it's understood between Cynthia and me that what happens during a period of separation is just filler until the two people who really count for each other are reunited. But if we were together and there was something going on, oh, Jesus! That would be horrendous. Then it's betrayal time.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to Jazz, did you ever feel that Fosse was putting in too much personal stuff, that the film was becoming too much of a couch session?

[A] Scheider: On the contrary. Mainly, the pieces that were cut out of Jazz were the ones Bob thought were funny or represented his view of life. But if they slowed down the story, they were gone.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Scheider: When Fosse actually had his heart attack, and then had a second heart attack while still in the hospital, all the lawyers moved in and made him write his will immediately. But when it was finished, they needed someone to witness it. Paddy Chayefsky was sitting there in the hospital room, so they asked him. But Paddy said, "I won't sign it until I read it." So he starts reading and reading and everybody's standing there, waiting for him, and finally he says, "Hey, my name's not in here." Fosse's got tubes sticking out of him and he's barely conscious, but he manages to cough out, "You know, Paddy, it's only the closest family...." And Chayefsky says, "But I'm not in here." Fosse tells him, "Yes, well, you know, I didn't include any friends." But Chayefsky insists, "If I'm not in it, I won't sign it. Fuck it, live." And Chayefsky really didn't sign Fosse's will. And, of course, Fosse did live. Bobby tried to put that scene in the movie, with Cliff Gorman playing the Chayefsky role. But in editing, he felt it slowed things down. So as much as it meant to him personally, out it came.

[Q] Playboy: Immediately after Jazz, you did Harold Pinter's new play, Betrayal, on Broadway. Jazz is so wild and extravagant, so much busier and noisier than life--the opposite of Pinter's precise, almost minimal style. Did Pinter see the film?

[A] Scheider: Yes. I took Harold and Antonia Fraser.

[Q] Playboy: What did they make of it?

[A] Scheider: At first, Harold was skeptical, but he stayed with it and in the end it pulled him right in. He said [in a neatly clipped British accent], "You know, Roy, I have seen that Angel of Death number before and I thought it was a rather silly conceit on Mr. Fosse's part. But at the end, as you were moving toward her, I was rather touched."

[Q] Playboy: "Rather touched"?

[A] Scheider: Yes. Rather touched. Isn't that lovely? And when we got to the scene where the doctor is examining me, and he's smoking, coughing, hacking--it's a real burlesque bit, an absolutely crazy thing to stick in the middle of the movie--Harold, who is a smoker himself, started to laugh and cough so hard Antonia wanted to take him out of the theater. He just went into a spasm. And he said afterward it was that kind of craziness that made the film so exciting.

[Q] Playboy: So he liked it?

[A] Scheider: Oh, yes. He wasn't like some theatrical people in New York who said--and I swear to you, I'm not making this up--"How dare Fosse choreograph this grand finale to his life, and then have the audacity to go on living?" But, of course, I'm partial. I loved the death scene. All actors do. I've never met an actor who doesn't love to die.

[Q] Playboy: You had a terrific death scene in Marathon Man, a picture you made with your old friend Dustin Hoffman. Is it true that the two of you started out together doing off-Broadway in the early Sixties?

[A] Scheider: That's right. Dustin and I began a production of Sergeant Musgrave's Dance together, but after two weeks of rehearsals, he was fired because his north-country accent wasn't up to the director's expectations. It didn't seem to matter that his performance was brilliant. The accent wasn't right, so they fired him. And Dustin was destroyed by that. But he went from there to The Journey of the Fifth Horse, and then to Eh?, where Mike Nichols saw him. A year later, he'd done The Graduate and he was off. And I didn't work with him again until Marathon Man.

[Q] Playboy: Hoffman is a fairly intense guy, isn't he?

[A] Scheider: Oh, God. I think I'm obsessed. I think I work night and day trying to get just exactly what I want into a role. But Dustin is 12 degrees higher. I mean, he pushes right into another dimension.

[Q] Playboy: People say he's hard to work with. Sometimes impossible.

[A] Scheider: He can be difficult, but the difficulties always come out of Dustin's efforts and frustrations in trying to do what he thinks is best for the movie. They'll never come out of vanity or ego or personal bullshit. I told that to Robert Benton when they were starting Kramer. I said the only problems you'll ever have will be the result of Dustin's obsession for attacking a role in as fresh a way as possible. Fosse had those problems with Dustin in Lenny. But a sensitive director will always recognize the difference between ego problems and the problems of an obsessed artist.

[Q] Playboy: Many people in the industry were surprised when you took that part in Marathon Man. You'd already done Jaws and were being offered a lot of starring roles, but you took a much smaller one as the third lead. Why?

[A] Scheider: It's true that I took that part against the wishes of a lot of people. But it was the best part around, which is all I ever go for. I mean, it was a tremendous part. The guy was fouled up sexually and felt guilty about it. He was a double agent who was lying to his brother, had run away from his father and was a killer besides. Just layer on top of layer. Now, all of that is great fun for an actor to work on. All that, plus I even got to die.

[Q] Playboy: What more could you want?

[A] Scheider: Nothing. So I took it. But the ultimate indignity was that the director, John Schlesinger, then said he didn't think Dustin and I could be brothers because we didn't look alike. So he asked me to do a test. My first reaction was, fuck him, I'm a star who has gallantly condescended to play third lead, and now they want me to test for it? But I calmed down and Dustin and I worked out this little improvisation of the two of us meeting in which we dance around and spar with each other and end up embracing. We shot it and Schlesinger liked it, so I got the part. And that little screen test turned out to be very important. Because later, when Olivier, Dustin and I were rehearsing, we all realized there was something missing from the script--a scene to cement the bond between the two brothers. Without that, the remainder of the movie wouldn't hold together. So we called in the author, William Goldman, but he said, "The kind of scene you two guys are talking about is not one I can write. I mean, I could, but it probably wouldn't be very convincing, because it come out of my experience. You'd be better off just winging it, finding something there for yourselves." But we didn't have to look very far. We already had the scene we needed: my screen test.

[Q] Playboy: To many observers, this year seemed an odd time for you to return to Broadway--just when you'd really hit your stride as a movie star. Why did you do it?

[A] Scheider: Since 1970, when I did my last play in New York, I really have been feeling that kind of bullshit self-torture and guilt that actors are supposed to go through when their careers are skyrocketing and they begin losing touch with their theatrical roots. You've heard that corny bit a million times: "I must replenish the soil and give back to Mother Theater what Mother Theater has given to me." Well, it turns out to be true.

[Q] Playboy: You felt guilty about becoming a movie star?

[A] Scheider: Hell, no. But there is a certain kind of guilt that all theatrically trained actors feel when they go on to movie careers. Theater is where you got started, where you learned your craft, and you feel you owe something. Also, if you really want to wrestle with some interesting ideas, you don't usually wrestle with them in the movies.

[Q] Playboy: So you brought Pinter's Betrayal to Broadway.

[A] Scheider: If you're going to wrestle, you might as well wrestle a heavyweight.

[Q] Playboy: But you took the smaller of the two male leads in Betrayal. Why?

[A] Scheider: Although the larger role was a wonderfully romantic part, I felt the smaller one was more difficult and complex. And that's what I wanted: something that would be a struggle--and a challenge. Something I could never be absolutely certain I had under my belt.

[Q] Playboy: You also took third billing.

[A] Scheider: Hey, I'm no fool. I know it looks artsy-craftsy to have my name third, to have people say, "Oh, isn't that noble? He's a big movie star and he's come to Broadway to do a play and he's taking third billing in the grand style of the theater." Actually, I believe that's the way it should be, but it strikes me funny that I did it. That I'm in the position to be so fucking magnanimous.

[Q] Playboy: Returning to live theater after a nine-year Hollywood sabbatical must have been a bit of a culture shock. Was doing a play harder or easier than you remembered?

[A] Scheider: It was as hard as I remembered. And as frightening. It's what Fosse talks about in the first line of Jazz--being "on the wire." It's that danger. The same danger a stunt man enjoys or a writer or an athlete: putting your ass on the line and wanting to risk it all for something that has a huge return, or no return. Every night I made my entrance on that play, my heart was pounding, my palms were sweating and I thought I was going to faint.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have some method or system for handling those fears?

[A] Scheider: I begin by asking myself what I'm afraid of. And, of course, what I'm really afraid of is forgetting my lines and making an ass of myself. But what I do is turn that fear around. I say no, that's not what I'm really afraid of. What I'm really feeling, I tell myself, is a fear of how good I'm going to be. I shift that energy around and make it positive, get it working for me. I tell myself, Tonight, Roy, you're going to be so fucking good it'll scare you. And it'll scare them.

[Q] Playboy: Some actors, as a means of achieving extreme intimacy with an audience, select one face in the crowd and direct the entire performance toward that person. Have you ever done that?

[A] Scheider: I always do that. I like to find someone whom I know doesn't like me or whom I don't like. Oh, boy, I'm really good that night. And it works just as well when there are people out there I love.

[Q] Playboy: You do it either for them or in spite of them?

[A] Scheider: That's right. And if I can't find anyone I love or hate, then I just pick out a pretty face and say, "OK, this one's for her."

[Q] Playboy: That notion of playing to someone you hate sounds a little dangerous. Isn't it possible you'll find someone so loathsome that over the course of the performance you won't be able to handle your emotions and your concentration will crack?

[A] Scheider: Oh, it's possible. And one night during Betrayal, I had to prevent it from happening. Henry Kissinger had one of his flunkies call to say that the Great Man wanted to see the play and sit in my "house seats." I said absolutely not. He can pay his money and sit anywhere he wants. But not in my seats. I don't want to see him. I don't want to know when he's there. And I certainly don't want him coming backstage to my dressing room afterward.

[Q] Playboy: Apparently, you're not a great admirer of the former Secretary of State and travel agent for the shah of Iran.

[A] Scheider: In his last novel, Good as Gold, Joseph Heller--who happens to be one of my favorite authors, anyway--does over 100 pages on Kissinger and it's the cruelest, most vicious send-up of a politician I've ever seen in fiction. Just pure, clear, double-distilled vitriol. I laughed my ass off.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from Kissinger, do you have any other strong political convictions?

[A] Scheider: Not strong enough to do anything about them, so I suppose they're not really that strong. I'm a half-assed liberal.

[Q] Playboy: Why half-assed?

[A] Scheider: Because I've never taken political action, gone out into the streets and actually lived my politics. So I suppose my beliefs aren't really that strong.

[Q] Playboy: You took to the streets once, though. As leader of the American Actor's Committee in 1967, you instigated a strike that blackened Broadway for a week in 1968.

[A] Scheider: That was the most passionate period of my life. It was a time when sleep was unimportant, even the destruction of my own career was unimportant. I was so wrought up, so emotionally committed to the ideals of that strike that nothing else mattered. It had all the trappings of a revolution and was, I must confess, very exhilarating. I was living life on a high. A dangerous high.

[Q] Playboy: What was that strike about?

[A] Scheider: It was about the fact that Broadway producers were bringing shows over from London and using all-English casts. American actors couldn't get work here, and we couldn't get work there, because when you get off the plane in London, the immigration officer takes your passport and puts a big ugly stamp on it that says, actor--no work. The whole thing was especially distasteful to me because I believe, ideally, in absolute, international artistic freedom. But we can't play Uncle Sam to everybody, allow them a liberty they don't allow us.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of actors and politics, your first important role in a motion picture was as Jane Fonda's pimp in Klute. What was she like to work with?

[A] Scheider: A total pro. On time, knew her work, wanted to improvise, was willing to do anything necessary to make the movie better.

[Q] Playboy: Was she doing any politicking on the set?

[A] Scheider: Constantly. At that time, Jane was into believing that the prostitutes on the street were no different from most other women.

[Q] Playboy: Did you agree with her?

[A] Scheider: No, but I liked her passion. And her professionalism. You know, Jane worked for years as a silly ingénue on the stage in New York and, I mean, she was laughable at first. But she stayed with it and slowly, carefully learned her craft. Then there were those years with Roger Vadim. She has a lot of difficult things to live down in her career, and out of those experiences came a political commitment you don't always have to agree with to respect. I respect the fact that through it all she's managed to maintain her career and give fantastic performances. So she bugs a lot of people, but fuck them. She's done it her way.

[Q] Playboy: Part of doing it your way has been to live in New York, even though you were away from Broadway doing Hollywood movies for nine years. Hasn't that been somewhat inconvenient, and maybe even a little premeditated--like taking third billing?

[A] Scheider: Not really. I just like it better in New York. For many reasons. First of all, I believe we're all pixilated and neurotic and absurd. Every one of us. And in New York we know we're crazy, but in L.A. they think they're sane. Also, it's too beautiful out there.

[Q] Playboy: Too beautiful?

[A] Scheider: Yeah, not enough anxiety. You're never really "on the wire" out there. The weather is beautiful, the mountains are beautiful, it's cheaper to live there than it is here, when you're out of work, you can get other jobs, the sun shines every day, there's no poverty in the streets, you don't see any blacks--it's like living in a goddamn test tube. Here in New York, every time you walk out the door in the morning, life swings a big shovel and smashes you in the face.

[Q] Playboy: And that's a benefit?

[A] Scheider: As an actor, you're supposed to be a mirror of your age. Well, hell, this is the place to observe it. You see life and death going on right out in the street. This town is a tremendous stimulant. There are a few other stimulating places in the world, a few other good towns to live in.

[Q] Playboy: But Beverly Hills isn't one of them?

[A] Scheider: Not for me. I mean, it's a very rich, comfortable, lovely community. And if that's what you want, great. But it's not what I want. Also, it's an industry town. You can't go for an ice cream there without running into three directors, four producers, two writers and six agents--all talking about their "properties." Sometimes, I just like to talk about my ice cream. But you can't escape it out there. You keep going to the same parties with the same people and get more paranoid every day.

[Q] Playboy: Why paranoid?

[A] Scheider: Because out there, the first thing you learn when you wake up in the morning is that some guy just got a part you know he's absolutely wrong for--a part you weren't even called for--and for the rest of the day you're mad at everybody. Who needs it?

[Q] Playboy: That business of casting never gets any less competitive, does it--even among top stars?

[A] Scheider: Nope. The rejection and the humiliation merely rise to a higher level.

[Q] Playboy: Last year's derby was especially incestuous, with you, Pacino, Dreyfuss and Hoffman vying for what turned out to be only two great male leads--in Kramer and Jazz. What did that little game of musical chairs look like from the inside?

[A] Scheider: Pacino was the first one they offered Kramer to, and Dreyfuss was actually cast in Jazz. But Al turned down the role in Kramer and Richard walked off Jazz. Then Bobby Benton, who wrote and directed Kramer, asked me to do it, but the producer, Stanley Jaffe, wanted Dustin. Then I got Jazz. So Dustin and I ended up not only with the best roles of the year but with roles that both of us were absolutely perfect for. And Dreyfuss got nothing, and Pacino got worse than nothing. He got Cruising.

[Q] Playboy: In general, are you a fan of Pacino's?

[A] Scheider: I admire Pacino very much. In my opinion, and this may sound crazy, I think Pacino's most beautiful and touching performance went unnoticed, even though he did it in the biggest picture of its year: The Godfather, Part II.

[Q] Playboy: We weren't aware that anything went unnoticed about the Godfather movies.

[A] Scheider: Pacino did, because everyone was watching De Niro. De Niro was the young, fresh guy on the move, coming up. Audiences are fickle. They catch on to that rising star. Who's interested in a guy going down? Al's role in Godfather II was an immaculate study of a man falling to pieces, a Mafia kingpin becoming slowly and devastatingly aware that all his values are shit. He can't hold on to anything. His wife, his kid, his power--it's all slipping away from him and he can only stand there and watch it. It was a much more complex and adult performance than he gave in The Godfather, because the part was richer. A sensational performance, really. Just brilliant. But nobody noticed. It all got washed away.

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of getting washed away, you made a disparaging remark about Pacino's last picture, William Friedkin's Cruising.

[A] Scheider: Me and everyone else who saw it--including Al.

[Q] Playboy: You worked with Friedkin on two movies, The French Connection and Sorcerer. Looking at the wreckage of Cruising, and at the people involved, what do you think went wrong?

[A] Scheider: I feel I know exactly what happened. I know Billy Friedkin. I know my man. And Billy is a smooth talker.

[Q] Playboy: But what did Friedkin talk Pacino into?

[A] Scheider: The same thing he talked me into on Sorcerer--doing an entire movie without what Billy calls "sentiment" or "melodrama." "We're not going to stoop to any of those heartfelt moments," Billy will say. "We don't need them." But you go to Billy and tell him you don't understand a particular scene, or that you're afraid the movie has lost track of where it's going, and he'll sit you down and sweet-talk you into believing it'll all work out. But in the end, you look at the movie and say, "Holy shit. I was right. This doesn't make sense." And I'm absolutely certain that's what happened to Al on Cruising. He got sweet-talked.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any idea what it is about Friedkin that causes him to do that--make pictures that are devoid of emotion?

[A] Scheider: An actor always looks for the center of a character--what really drives him--and I think I could capsulize Billy's center in two words: Get even. Look, I don't want to sound like an ingrate, because Billy and Phil D'Antoni gave me my first big shot in The French Connection. And Billy's problems, to the extent that they're personal, have no place in a public interview.

[Q] Playboy: But what you consider his professional problems do, because they're right up there on the screen. So let's stick with that.

[A] Scheider: Billy is--first and always--an extraordinarily gifted picturemaker. He can tell stories with pictures and he shoots beautifully. He's also a very bright guy--well read and well rounded. But underneath that is this peculiar get-even philosophy that just pulls the rest of it down. It makes him angry. It makes him work out of distrust, paranoia. It makes him run a movie set where everyone is on edge. He believes you get the best work out of people that way. I don't happen to believe that.

[Q] Playboy: Which other modern actors do you admire?

[A] Scheider: Brando. Ah, Brando. Now, there is a real strange animal.

[Q] Playboy: Animal?

[A] Scheider: Sure. Marlon is such a pure piece of animal flesh. He's pansexual, beyond normalcy of any kind. He's so delicate. He can outfeminize any woman in any scene. He became more vulnerable than Blanche Dubois. I wound up crying for him, not her. Then he'll play a Nazi in Roots II and within five minutes you totally understand why that man's brain is so twisted. You find yourself thinking, Why don't they leave him alone? I mean, if he played Hitler, you'd love him.

[Q] Playboy: Any thoughts on the new Brando? The Brando who calls acting a hustle?

[A] Scheider: No. I don't know where his head is now, but his Playboy Interview did provide a few insights. Your guy [Lawrence Grobel] kept trying to get him to talk about acting and Brando kept refusing--but he always got suckered in. Without meaning to--in fact, while trying to say just the opposite--Brando revealed that he still loves acting. That drive that made him a great actor is still there. As sour and twisted and jaded as he's become, as much as he now wants to be remembered as a philosopher, a philanthropist, as savior of the Indians, the joy of the performance is still in him. You can feel it in that interview. He's still an artist.

[Q] Playboy: But don't you think many of Brando's recent performances--in Apocalypse Now, for example--have been throwaways?

[A] Scheider: Marlon has screwed up a lot of roles in recent years, just deliberately shit all over the director and the script and everything else. Still, the talent is there, and once in a while he'll give you a few minutes of his special genius, and then it's magic time.

[Q] Playboy: We talked about Jane Fonda before. She and many other performers of your generation come from theatrical families and had their opportunities dropped into their laps. Your father ran a garage in New Jersey. You worked off-Broadway for ten years before getting your first good shot in the movies--ironically, with Fonda in Klute. Does the unfairness of that ever piss you off?

[A] Scheider: First of all, I never planned to be a movie star--or a movie actor at all. My goal was to become a working actor in the theater. The movie career was dessert. A banana split at the end of the meal that was especially sweet because it was unexpected. But to answer your question--no. Those things never pissed me off because getting the chance means nothing if you can't deliver the goods.

[Q] Playboy: But a struggling actor without connections can wait years before being recognized. And no doubt some talented people are never recognized.

[A] Scheider: Sure, but I had such an ego, such a powerful, crazy, naïve belief in myself, that those things didn't bother me much. I figured my turn was coming.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see now that you were lucky? That your turn might not have come?

[A] Scheider: Of course it might not have come. My optimism was ridiculous--but necessary. Without it, those years of rejections and humiliation would have driven me mad.

[Q] Playboy: Were there people with whom you worked 15 and 20 years ago who were talented but who didn't make it?

[A] Scheider: Yes, a lot of them.

[Q] Playboy: Besides talent--and luck--can you now identify any qualities you had that they lacked?

[A] Scheider: Absolutely. Every one of them suffered from a failure to show up. That's the key. You've got to keep sticking your face in there all the time. You've got to beat them down.

[Q] Playboy: Which is reminiscent, of course, of the opening sequence in Jazz: the audition scene, that overhead shot of a stage crammed with hundreds of people fighting desperately for a handful of parts. Was that a realistic portrait of an open casting call?

[A] Scheider: Absolutely. And you have to show up for that humiliation time after time. And just as important, you have to go home saying, "Well, I guess they didn't see it this time. They didn't notice that I'm special. But they will. Sooner or later, those fuckers will recognize my talent."

[Q] Playboy: If an aspiring young actor or actress came to you for advice, aside from showing up, what would you say?

[A] Scheider: If you want to act, act. Don't talk about it, do it. Don't hang out discussing theory and moaning about not getting a chance. Practice your theories. The chances are out there. Act in the closet. Act for the American Legion. Act for the B'nai B'rith. Act for your local community theater. Just act, act, act. Study your voice. Study your movements. Study every other actor and steal what works.

[Q] Playboy: Any other advice?

[A] Scheider: There are, I think, three essential attributes every actor must have. One is intelligence--but not too much. Just enough to interpret what you're doing wisely, to make good choices. But not so much that you go beyond the director and the author. They're the intellects. The audience wants to see the actor's emotions, not his intellect. They want to see raw meat.

[Q] Playboy: Do any actors come to mind whom you feel overintellectualize?

[A] Scheider: Paul Scofield is one. If I want to see a mind act, I'll go to London and watch Scofield do Othello. It will be interesting and, in a way, it will be great theater--but not, in my opinion, great acting.

[Q] Playboy: And the second attribute?

[A] Scheider: Physical grace. Regardless of your size or build, you must develop a certain fluidity, so your movements become pleasing to the eye. Whether you're Charles Laughton or Marlon Brando, whether you want to be beautiful and graceful or ugly and awkward--either way, you must develop those physical skills.

[Q] Playboy: Do you learn a role physically in the same sense that you learn a script?

[A] Scheider: Yes. In fact, for me, the physicality comes first. I never feel I have a line memorized until I've got the physical motion that goes with it. When I have my body moving the right way, then the line becomes mine. Until then, it belongs to the author.

[Q] Playboy: And the third attribute an actor needs?

[A] Scheider: The third is the absolute ability to give yourself over to make-believe. You have to play a child's game of "as if." In other words, if I tell you I'm going to pour this glass of beer over your head and you're going to react as if it were molten lava, in your imagination you have to feel the lava--the pain, the weight of it, the heat of it--and you have to react. The most important direction any actor ever receives is "as if." And if you or the director can find the right "as if" for that moment, you've got it. Because the child in you will make you do it right.

[Q] Playboy: Which brings to mind a reaction shot you did in Jaws that is now considered a classic. You were on the boat and you suddenly saw the shark for the first time. You expressed abject horror with utter blankness. A hundred million viewers shrieked with terror, but you never made a sound--and it worked.

[A] Scheider: The key to that scene, to that game of "as if," was that no reaction would work. It was too extraordinary. So it had to be just, "Ah." Mouth drops, facial muscles relax, silence. It was the most frightening reaction, because it was the most real.

[Q] Playboy: Was that your idea or director Steven Spielberg's?

[A] Scheider: It was mine, and the most difficult thing about shooting it was that I didn't have the benefit of the goddamn shark, which was broken most of the time. When Steven said, "Now you see it," there was nothing in front of me but the lens.

[Q] Playboy: Touching people's lives like that--moving them--even if it's merely to fright, has to be a very special feeling of accomplishment.

[A] Scheider: It's the best review any performer can get. My PR person has a brother who works on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and he told me a story along those lines that I found particularly satisfying. You know what the exchange is like, don't you? The bell rings in the morning and thousands of guys start screaming and bidding millions of dollars for potatoes and pork bellies and every other goddamn thing in the world. It's heart-failure land every day. So her brother, who's a workaholic like Joe Gideon, and me, and millions of other men who were able to identify so strongly with that part, takes six of his cronies from the exchange to see Jazz, and it knocks them over. The next morning, when that bell goes off, what do you think they yell? "It's showtime, folks!" So the other guys on the exchange ask what the hell that was about, and they all go see the movie, too. By the end of the week, the whole Mercantile Exchange is opening with all these guys screaming, "It's showtime, folks!" I told Fosse about that and I don't think I've ever seen him look so satisfied.

[Q] Playboy: Do any other instances of that kind come to mind?

[A] Scheider: Yeah, when Billy Friedkin and I went down to Eddie Egan's trial after The French Connection. Egan was the real-life character Gene Hackman played in the movie, an overblown boastful Irishman who was unbearable at times but really was a great cop. I mean, he could smell a dope dealer four blocks away. But he was a pain in the ass, as most zealots are. And he had a lot of enemies on the force who didn't like the fact that the movie had made him a folk hero. So they tried to nail him on some trumped-up heroin charge, and Billy and I went down as--ha-ha--character witnesses. But I'd forgotten my wallet and didn't have any identification. So Billy said, "When we get there, just tell them you're Lieutenant Russo"--the fictional character I played in the film. I said, "Billy, you're crazy. They're not going to believe that. This is real life. These are real cops." He said, "Oh, no? Just watch this." And when we got to the desk, Billy showed the sergeant his identification, then said, "And Lieutenant Russo is with me." The sergeant looked me over for a moment, then said, "How are you, Lieutenant Russo? How's your wife? How's the kid in Florida?" When we were alone, Billy told me, "That's the best review you're ever gonna get in your life."

[Q] Playboy: Was there a single moment or experience that made you want to become an actor?

[A] Scheider: Acting wasn't even something I'd considered until I was in college. I was a history major at Franklin and Marshall, reading Shakespeare for fun on the side and planning to go on to law school. Law was always the plan for me. It was what my father wanted.

[Q] Playboy: And your father was the major force in your early life?

[A] Scheider: He was the major force in my life, period. From as early as I can remember, until just a few years ago--one year before he died--everything I did in life was done with an eye toward pleasing him, gaining his approval and love, which I never really felt I got. He was not the kind of man who could say "I love you" easily, and he'd say nice things about you only to other people.

[Q] Playboy: Did you fight?

[A] Scheider: All the time. We agreed on nothing. He liked Joe McCarthy and Nixon. I was always finding John Birch literature in the drawers. F.D.R. was a "pinko." He hated Catholics, Jews, blacks. But he was so full of contradictions, so full of shit. If we'd be driving down the street and a car would cut in front of us, my father would say, "That Jew bastard." I'd say, "How do you know he's Jewish?" And my father would say, "Only a Jew would do a thing like that." Meanwhile, many of the people who owned the stores behind his garage were Jewish, and they were his friends. I used to tease him about it, but he'd just say, "Oh, they're different. They're all right." Blacks were "niggers" in our house, but our dentist was black. My father wouldn't let anyone but Dr. Kincaid touch his mouth. He was laughable. A real Archie Bunker. In fact, when I first saw All in the Family, it was not funny for me. Not funny at all. Oh, no.

[Q] Playboy: Your father doesn't exactly sound like the kind of guy who'd be thrilled at having a son in the theater.

[A] Scheider: He derided all aspirations toward acting, all literary aspirations. To my father, law was the only acceptable means of upward mobility. But his idea of a lawyer was Perry Mason, because in a trial you get results. There's a decision, a winner. He liked that.

[Q] Playboy: But while you were in college, you became involved in theater.

[A] Scheider: Yes, as an extracurricular activity. Franklin and Marshall had an excellent drama program directed by a very special and talented man named Darrell Larsen. I worked hard on those student productions and, in the process, learned an extraordinary lesson: The happier you are, the better and easier everything in your life becomes. The more hours I spent in the theater, the better I got at everything. My grades improved dramatically. My personal relationships grew deeper and more satisfying. I had literally found myself.

[Q] Playboy: But then you had to face your father.

[A] Scheider: Which I didn't do until graduation. God, what a moment. My mother and father and I were in a hotel in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the night before graduation. They were so proud of me. It was, you know, "Next stop, Perry Mason." And that's when I told him. I just said, "Look, Dad, I'm not going to law school." There was a long silence, and then he just said, "Well, I think you're a damn fool." And that's all he said, because he certainly wasn't a cruel man. But in his eyes, I could see what he was thinking--that all those years of college that they'd both worked so hard to put me through were now a total waste.

[Q] Playboy: Then there was a break in your life for a three-year stint in the Air Force. Did you volunteer?

[A] Scheider: Hell, no. You know, today almost everyone recognizes that the Vietnam war was wrong. But for my generation, it was Korea, and I wasn't too crazy about that war, either. So I joined R.O.T.C. at school to stay out of it. But then, after college, I owed Uncle Sam three years.

[Q] Playboy: And while you were in the Air Force, you got married.

[A] Scheider: I met my first wife in a small town in Oregon where I was stationed and she was working as a surgical nurse. She was married, with two kids, and her marriage was teetering on the brink. I just kind of pushed it over the cliff. When she got her divorce, I married her and took her and her two boys back with me to the East.

[Q] Playboy: To make your name on the stage?

[A] Scheider: It was ludicrous. I fancied myself the white knight who swept up the damsel in distress and saved the entire family. But the reality was that I couldn't support any of them. It was her job and her money that supported me. There was a lot of pressure and I didn't ... although I did love her, I didn't love her enough to sacrifice my career. I was totally career-bent. I mean, I really wanted to act, and the sacrifices I had to make weren't working with the wife and the two kids. Finally, I had to say, "I've made a terrible mistake, I've adopted and uprooted a family I'm not prepared to or capable of handling. My relationship with you isn't as strong as I thought it was. And, basically, I'm an asshole. So take the money, the car, everything. But I want out." She was hurt, very hurt. But also very strong. All she said was, "I never expected this from you." I never expected it from myself, either. But that's the way it worked out.

[Q] Playboy: Have you remained in touch?

[A] Scheider: I tried, but she was very cold. Uninterested. I'm especially sad because I think now I'd probably be more capable of explaining what was going on in my life at that time than I was then. I'm sure I must have seemed very cruel. That wasn't a particularly happy time in my life, or one I'm particularly proud of.

[Q] Playboy: The fact that you weren't working no doubt made everything worse.

[A] Scheider: No doubt. I was getting nowhere in New York, but if you're an actor, you have to keep acting. So I went back to Franklin and Marshall and starred in a student production of Richard III.

[Q] Playboy: For nothing?

[A] Scheider: For work. I really got into that part and did a fairly good job. Joe Papp heard about it, called me up for a reading and after 15 minutes of Richard, he hired me to play Mercutio in his New York Shakespeare Festival production of Romeo and Juliet.

[Q] Playboy: And you were on your way.

[A] Scheider: I was off.

[Q] Playboy: And after ten years on the stage, where you did everything but specialized in the classics----

[A] Scheider: Especially Shakespeare, my old, true love----

[Q] Playboy: You landed the role that really launched you as an international star--Lieutenant Russo in The French Connection. You say you never really intended to become a movie star. How did it happen?

[A] Scheider: By accident, of course. And by showing up. You say I spent ten years on the stage, and I suppose that's true, but it feels like I spent those ten years doing auditions--and getting rejected. Which is exactly how I landed that part in French Connection.

[Q] Playboy: By getting rejected?

[A] Scheider: That's right. I was standing out in the rain one afternoon behind a long line of people to audition for a British play with a British director, and one of the criteria was that everyone in that particular play had to be at least six feet tall. Now, I'm 5"11", but with shoes, I'm six feet. And when you audition, whatever it is they want, that's what you are. You just make up your mind. "This is what I am today." They want bald, you're bald. They want hair, you've got hair. It doesn't matter. So I'm six feet tall that day, standing in the rain for an hour, waiting to get onstage. Finally, it's my turn. I walk out and the only light they have on is the work light, which means they can see me but I can't see anyone in the audience. I don't know who's out there. All I hear is this voice. [British accent, more than a little feminine] "Mr. Scheider, would you please read? You are six feet, aren't you?" I say, "I'm five, eleven, but with shoes, I'm six feet." He says, "All right, read." I start reading and he interrupts me. "How tall are you?" I say, "Five, eleven." He says, "All right, would you read again, please?" I read again and again he interrupts me. "You're not really six feet," he says. Then he asks the stage manager, who is exactly six feet, to stand next to me. "See," he says, "you're not as tall as Larry. You're not really six feet." That was the last straw. I threw my script into the audience and started screaming, "Do you realize, you fucking limey idiot, that if James Cagney, Marlon Brando or Laurence fucking Olivier came out here to audition for you, none of them would get the job, because none of them is six feet tall? So take your six feet and shove them up your ass." And I walked out. Now, I didn't know that in the audience was a guy named Bob Weiner, a movie critic, who was doing the casting for Friedkin and D'Antoni on The French Connection. And after seeing me, Weiner told them he'd found the perfect Lieutenant Russo, except, he said, "The guy's a little hot. I don't know if you can handle him."

[Q] Playboy: But somehow they managed.

[A] Scheider: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: And you got the part, and an Oscar nomination, and everything else followed. But is that really the kind of behavior you'd recommend for a young actor at an audition?

[A] Scheider: If you feel a reaction like that is emotionally correct, then what the hell--let it rip. You have nothing to lose when you're that young. They're not going to think less of you. They don't think anything of you, anyway. So show a little fire. If you feel shit on, speak up.

[Q] Playboy: Another major development in your life during what we can perhaps now call your theatrical years was your second and current marriage. Cynthia, who's now one of the top film editors, was an actress then. And you met doing Shakespeare at Stratford, Connecticut.

[A] Scheider: Yes, but ... hold on to that thought and cut back a couple of years to me playing my very first professional role in New York--Mercutio for Joe Papp in Romeo and Juliet. In the audience one night are two ladies. One takes a matchbook out of her bag and writes on it, "Who's the guy playing Mercutio?" Her friend says, "Roy Scheider." She says, "He's terrific." Just one of those little incidents that you forget about ten seconds after they happen. Cut forward four years. I'm married. I have a child. Cynthia is going through one of her old bags, pulls out a matchbook and says, "Oh, my God." On it is written, "Who's the guy playing Mercutio?"

[Q] Playboy: Very spooky. But the two of you did meet in a more normal way at Stratford, right?

[A] Scheider: A slightly more normal way. I'd been in the festival all summer. Cynthia joined in midseason and got a job understudying the female leads. She knew a lot about Shakespeare and immediately struck up friendships with everybody. But she seemed a little tough for me, unapproachable. So I crossed her off my list of desirable fucks for the season. But a few weeks later, I'm in the local pub where everyone goes for a drink after the show. Cynthia's sitting at a booth with a guy and I'm standing at the bar. I happen to look over and notice that she's looking at me. I look away, then back again, and again she's looking at me. Then I see her pick up her beer and pour it over the head of the guy she's with. He gets up and storms out. So I leave the bar, walk over to her table and say, "What did you do that for?" And she says, "To get you to come over here." I say, "You're kidding!" She says, "You're here, aren't you?" So I sat down and--you might say--never got up. What a broad!

[Q] Playboy: Your relationship with Cynthia is famous for its wild arguments, breakups and reconciliations.

[A] Scheider: It's not all that wild, and she's never poured beer on my head. But she does occasionally walk out on me and move into the hotel across the street. But she's always come back--so far. We're two people who are absolutely convinced that marriage doesn't work. But because of our backgrounds, our social brainwashing, we don't know any better. We can't seem to get out of it. After years of living and loving and arguing, the relationship becomes distilled. One by one, you throw out all the bullshit fantasies that you thought were holding the relationship together and get down to the rock bottom of what your relationship is really about.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, you believe in marriage.

[A] Scheider: Neither of us is particularly enamored of the institution, but we figured we needed something to commit ourselves to besides a lot of talk.

[Q] Playboy: Earlier, we discussed the periods of separation you and Cynthia have because of your careers. Periods during which the two of you are permitted--or tacitly permitted--to have affairs. After an absence of several months--and perhaps a couple of sexual adventures--are the reunions a little awkward?

[A] Scheider: They're awkward because, in a way, we have to adjust to each other all over again. I welcome her back for all the things I love about her, but all the petty little idiosyncrasies that annoy me about her are back, too. It's jarring. I mean, if I'm walking into the bathroom in the middle of the night and there's a pile of Cynthia's clothes in my way, well, you know, that's profoundly annoying. It's world-shakingly important that my ingress to the bathroom has been impeded, a problem I haven't had to deal with for the past few months. Those are the crazy little details--the love and the petty annoyances--of a reunion between adults. But what makes a relationship survive is when you can convince yourself that all those eccentricities are absolutely charming because they're part of the larger portrait of the person you adore.

[Q] Playboy: But you do argue.

[A] Scheider: Yeah. About petty things. Exercise: I do gymnastics three times a week and run every morning. She hates exercise. That bothers me, and if she gains a few pounds, I go crazy. Reading habits: She reads one claptrap novel after another. I mean, how dare she get that much enjoyment out of Agatha Christie, who couldn't put four sentences' worth of character development into an entire novel to save her life? Then Cynthia will tell me that I'm obsessed with sports, obsessed with my weight, and for all the goddamn "literature" I read, how come I never get any smarter? All of which, of course, is true.

[Q] Playboy: In general, Hollywood people are famous for not reading.

[A] Scheider: I'm not a Hollywood person.

[Q] Playboy: So you've said. Who are your favorite authors?

[A] Scheider: My favorites these days are the South Americans--[Jorge Luis] Borges, [Gabriel] García Marquez. At the moment, though, I'm alternating between V. S. Naipaul and a mystery writer I've discovered named Robert Parker--a very funny guy. I'm also a magazine junkie. I read about a dozen regularly--and, yes, before you ask, I do read Playboy. But the photos in Playboy do nothing for me. Personally, I think Vogue is much more erotic.

[Q] Playboy: Do you find the printed word more powerful than the graven image?

[A] Scheider: Yes, for my generation, I think it is. The generation immediately following mine is the visual generation. I watch the 11-o'clock news on television, but I don't really believe any of that stuff really happened until I read it in the paper the next morning.

[Q] Playboy: So far, we've taken your career and your relationships up to 1970, when you were cast in The French Connection. But what about your father? How did your relationship with him fare during those years?

[A] Scheider: By the time I did French Connection, he was almost ready to admit that maybe this acting thing was going to work out all right, after all. But he still thought I was a dummy for not going to law school at night, you know, as a fallback position.

[Q] Playboy: So the approval you wanted----

[A] Scheider: Needed, not wanted. Without my father's approval, my life was incomplete. And to answer your question, no, even after French Connection came out and I was nominated for an Academy Award, my father continued to withhold his approval. I learned a lot about my father during those years and, curiously, one of the triggers to that learning process was seeing Death of a Salesman. I left that movie destroyed. My father had become a human being in two hours--a guy with hopes and anxieties and failures and romances and aspirations for me and love for my mother. Up to that point, he was just, you know, a father. This ogre I had to deal with every day. But understanding him did nothing to alleviate my problem. I continued to feel shut out, unloved.

[Q] Playboy:The French Connection was an extraordinarily realistic film. It is rumored that while preparing for that movie, you and Hackman actually went on busts with Egan, Sonny Grosso and the rest of the dope squad.

[A] Scheider: Absolutely true. Hackman and I went up into Harlem with those cops every night. We were busting into shooting galleries and.... Don't get me wrong, Gene and I weren't the first and second ones through the door. We were maybe the fifth and sixth ones through. But we were there, all right, without guns, scared shitless. And the tableaux we'd see were incredible, like they'd been staged for us. There'd be burners going. Guys with needles in, guys with needles out. One guy lying on the bed, dead, overdosed. I kept thinking, Jesus, this is too perfect. It's too much like a movie. Gene and I would see all that, listen to the cops talk, then rush down to the car and write it all down. Because Friedkin had told us from the beginning that we'd be free to improvise a lot of the incidental conversation, and we were intent upon making it as realistic as possible.

[Q] Playboy: So you had that part of Sonny Grosso--Russo in the film--down pretty well in your mind by the time you began shooting.

[A] Scheider: Actually, I didn't have the part figured out at all for the first two weeks Gene and I spent with them. I kept wondering what the relationship between Egan and Grosso was really about. What held it together? I mean, Egan fashioned himself the Lone Ranger, a one-man fight for law and order in Harlem. Grosso was shy, reserved, sensitive. Nobody liked Egan, everybody liked Grosso, and the two of them seemed to have nothing in common. Yet they were a terrific team. One night, I said to Grosso, "Jesus, Sonny, that Eddie is really tough to take, isn't he?" And Grosso said, "Look, if I didn't like Eddie Egan, who would?" Well, that was it. I'd found the center of the character. It took me two weeks to get that out of Grosso, but as soon as I heard it, I knew exactly where I was going with the role. I knew who Egan was and I knew who Grosso was. It was all right there on the line.

[Q] Playboy: Did Hackman, who won the Academy Award for his performance in The French Connection, discover the center of his role that way?

[A] Scheider: No, Gene's interpretation was really Billy Friedkin's idea, and the two of them fought bitterly about it every day. Although, as I've said, I think Billy has certain problems as a director, and although I think Gene is absolutely one of the greatest actors in the world today, in that case, Gene was wrong and Billy was right. Gene kept wanting to humanize Egan, but Billy would say, "No, this man is a pig. He's as rotten as the criminals he's chasing." Billy molded an unbelievable performance, a character who was so outrageous you could laugh at him, yet you were still behind him because he believed so strongly in what he was doing. He was a man possessed.

[Q] Playboy: After The French Connection, you made Jaws, another one of the biggest-grossing movies of all time. Spielberg was only 26 then. How did you feel about working with such a young guy?

[A] Scheider: I met Steven at a Christmas party. He was talking to Tracy Keenan Wynn about the logistical problems he was going to have trying to shoot this movie I'd never heard of about a giant shark that--ha-ha--comes out of the water and destroys a boat. So I listened to a bit of this, you know, and walked away, thinking, Oh, that poor kid is in a lot of trouble. He's so inexperienced. He doesn't have any idea where he's going. During the following months, the book came out and was an enormous success, and Steven called to ask me to read his script with an eye toward playing the cop. Well, I read it and I knew right away that this was no inexperienced kid trying to make a movie. I'd read the book and thought it was so-so. I mean, the last 150 pages were sensational--beautifully written and very exciting--but I didn't care much for the early parts or the characterizations. In the book, the wife and the scientist are adulterers, the cop is a cuckold and Quint is just a crazy Marine. Steven scooped out all the good parts from the book, tossed out the rest and redid the characters in a way that gave each of them a passion the audience could understand. Each guy was on that boat for a different reason. All in conflict with one another, all after that shark for a different reason. Spielberg understood that what makes movies work is human conflict, not special effects. So I respected Steven very much from the start.

[Q] Playboy: Because once you'd seen what he had done with the script, his age didn't bother you?

[A] Scheider: No, and in the end, his age turned out to be an advantage. A veteran director on Jaws probably would have committed suicide.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Scheider: Because the shark didn't work. Steven kept trying to shoot footage every day, to keep the film moving, but they just couldn't get that goddamn shark to work. Three months, we waited. When it finally did work, we cracked open champagne. It was like the launching of the Titanic. My image of Steven will always be of him sitting on that camera barge with his legs stretched out and his cowboy hat down over his head, just waiting. Waiting for the goddamn shark to work.

[Q] Playboy: What did you, Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw do during all that time?

[A] Scheider: We rehearsed, improvised. It was great for us. By the time we shot the thing, we knew one another so well we were practically a repertory company.

[Q] Playboy: You're rumored to be a believer in est. Somehow, that seems a little difficult to believe.

[A] Scheider: Well, I can't say I'm a believer in est in the sense that I go around proselytizing the world according to Erhard. But I did the est training and I've never had a better time in my life. I never laughed so much, I never cried so much. I was actually dazzled. I couldn't believe that degree of intimacy could be achieved in a hotel room filled with 300 people. It was the best fucking show I've ever seen in my life.

[Q] Playboy: Is est supposed to be a show?

[A] Scheider: It was for me. I couldn't have bought $300 worth of theater tickets and seen what I saw. And I was one of the actors in the show. It was sensational.

[Q] Playboy:What was sensational?

[A] Scheider: On the first day, you hear somebody try to tell about some experience and you think, Why, that stupid, insensitive, inarticulate son of a bitch is boring me to death with this ridiculous tale. But by the end of the second week, that same person will have gone through such an extraordinary experience that out of the mouth of the person you thought was a fool will come poetry. You come to understand that within each of us is tremendous beauty, passion, joy and love for life; you realize that everyone is you. No matter how heinous or aberrational a person's confessions seem over those two weekends, you realize that that part of you has been totally done by this person. The most horrific nightmare you've ever had about yourself has actually been played out by someone. And you've played out one or two for them. You realize we're all part of one another. That's what's sensational. That's it.

[Q] Playboy: The true believers in est say Erhard's training--or his "show"--changed their lives in an enduring way. Can you say that?

[A] Scheider: Est was the catalyst that finally allowed me to resolve my relationship with my father. Otherwise, I probably never would have been able to do it, or I would have understood what I had to do too late.

[Q] Playboy: What, exactly, did you have to do?

[A] Scheider: I had to confront him, make him reach down and grasp his own feelings--something he'd never done in his life. And I realized I had to do it quickly, because he was sick. He'd had two strokes, and I thought, I can't let that son of a bitch die until we straighten this out. So I jumped in my car, drove to New Jersey and pulled up in front of the house. He was having lunch with my mother in the kitchen and I said, "OK, Mom. Get out. I've got to talk to him." So she left. I took a deep breath and said, "Dad, I want you to know that I love you very, very much, and everything I've done in my career, in my life, has been to please you, to make you happy, to make you love me, to make you feel that I was worth having as a son. But now that's no longer necessary, because I know you love me, I know you approve of me, it's just that you can't say it. So I want you to say it. I want you to say it right now at this table. I want you to tell me you love me. Can you say that, Dad?" And he says, "I ... I ... well, I...." I say, "Say it. Don't say it to my aunts. Don't say it to my uncles. Don't tell Mom. Tell me. Tell me that you love me." And he says, "I love you." I said, "I love you, too." And we both had a terrific cry and that was it. That was all that had to be done. And after that, it's amazing how our relationship changed. He'd ask me questions about what movie I was making and am I investing my money well and how's Cynthia. All of a sudden, we became friends. A year later, he died. I was sad, of course, but at least we were at peace with each other. Our relationship was complete.

[Q] Playboy: Generally, when an actor makes it big in the movies--especially as a cop--the TV offers come pouring in. After The French Connection, you must have had your choice. But you didn't bite.

[A] Scheider: Oh, yes I did.

[Q] Playboy: You did a TV series? Why didn't we see you?

[A] Scheider: I did a series, but you didn't see me. That's the point. What a fucking mess.

[Q] Playboy: Care to talk about it?

[A] Scheider: After French Connection, I was offered a lot of money by MGM to do an espionage series called Assignment: Munich, with the understanding that it would be shot entirely in Europe. And I believed them. I was so naïve I had dreams of making The Third Man.

[Q] Playboy: Meeting Joseph Cotten in the Mozart Café.

[A] Scheider: Exactly. Working with Europe's finest actors and directors. Everybody else on the project seemed to understand that after they had their pilot, they'd bring the whole thing back to Hollywood and just do a few cover shots in Europe. Which is exactly what happened. Halfway through the pilot, the studio sent a guy over to Europe to break the news to us. I was so surprised. Boy, was I dumb. So I called my lawyer and said, "How do I get out of this thing?" He said, "Well, as a matter of fact, there is a technicality. You never signed a 'deal memo.'" So I told this studio guy that I wasn't going to do just another Hollywood-style, action-adventure cop series, no matter how much they paid me, so he could go fuck himself. And I got on a plane and came home. They took me to court and we battled for three years. Eventually, they won and I had to pay $165,000 in cash. That's what it cost me to say no, to get out of that series. All the money I made right up through Jaws went to pay that debt. But it was worth it. They got my money, but they didn't get me. I wasn't in their lousy, phony TV series. I escaped.

[Q] Playboy: So it goes without saying that you don't see a TV series in your future.

[A] Scheider: Not now. No way, now. But in my later years, I would consider it. Speaking in very macabre terms, TV has become a wonderful graveyard for older actors who want to continue working. I think it's marvelous that people like Jimmy Stewart, Buddy Ebsen and Karl Malden, who may have lost their box-office appeal because of the fickleness of the industry but still have a lot to contribute as artists, now have a place where they can continue acting, continue doing what they love to do.

[Q] Playboy: That's an original perspective.

[A] Scheider: It's the way I watch television. Today's younger actors and actresses who work exclusively in TV aren't very good. They don't know how to act, and working exclusively in that medium, they never learn. You just see a depressing succession of flat, superficial performances. But I can turn on my television and see an older, trained actor do some good work. I mean, they can't consistently do good work, because the scripts aren't that good. But once in a while, you catch a terrific performance by one of those people. It's nice. And I'd do it if I couldn't get steady work elsewhere. What the hell? I'm an actor who loves to act. Remember what I told you before? My earliest ambition was never to be a movie star. It was to be a working actor.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to have a fairly healthy attitude about the nature of your work.

[A] Scheider: Talent is a constant, but fame is a ride on the roller coaster. Maureen Stapleton and I were at a party for Carroll O'Connor a few years ago, and later in the evening, after Maureen had had a few drinks, as was her wont in those days, Mrs. Carroll O'Connor came up to us and said, "Isn't this a wonderful party?" And we all agreed. Then she said, "But, you know, the one thing Carroll misses is his privacy." And Maureen said, "Well, don't worry. He'll get it back."

[Q] Playboy: Another clinker you were involved with was Jaws 2. Why did you agree to act in the sequel?

[A] Scheider: I sure tried like hell to get out of Jaws 2. I pleaded insanity. I went crazy in the Beverly Hills Hotel. My act was so convincing that Barry Diller, who was head of Paramount, where I was making Sorcerer, actually called to see if I was stable enough to do his picture. But nothing could get me out of Jaws 2. I was locked into that contract. So, finally, I just did my job the best I could and hoped the public would forgive me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have scripts offered to you all the time?

[A] Scheider: I read about six per week.

[Q] Playboy: So many scripts are written and so few films are made--it makes you wonder what all those unproduced screenplays are like.

[A] Scheider: They go in cycles--whatever's hot at the time. The hot movie now, of course, is Kramer. So I read scripts every week about marriage, children, divorce. It's like the monster we created after French Connection. We spawned ten years of cop movies, cop dramas and cop series on television.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever written a script, or wanted to? You're certainly one of the more literate people in the industry.

[A] Scheider: No.... Oh, I'll tell you, I've always wanted to write a good baseball story. I love the sport and I don't think it's ever been done really well in the movies. Willie Mays was my idol. The best ballplayer I ever saw--not merely for his talent but also for his grace and joy.

[Q] Playboy: Are there any performers you feel that way about?

[A] Scheider: Astaire is one, certainly. He just puts me away. Not only am I amazed by what he's doing but that expression on his face, that look of absolute joy and childlike grace--the way Mays played center field. Astaire always seems to be saying, "Hey, look at this. Isn't this fun? Watch how I do it. And wouldn't you like to do it? And you can do it. You can do it as well as I can. Watch me now, I'll show you." That's the kind of performer I aspire to be. The kind who sucks the audience right up there with him.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the Oscars for a moment.

[A] Scheider: Ah, yes. The Oscars.

[Q] Playboy: Dustin Hoffman's Oscar for Best Actor, over you, was a foregone conclusion this year. If you were the favorite, would you have gone instead of staying in New York to perform in Betrayal?

[A] Scheider: Sure. I'm not that committed to my art. Bob Fosse tried to convince me to go at the last minute. He said, "Come on, we'll have a little fun--or a little pain." But I said no. We all knew Dustin had it wrapped up. And for most of us, those things really can be pretty painful. In case you didn't notice, except for Jack Lemmon--who really shows up for everything--none of the rest of us in the best-actor category were there. Pacino, Peter Sellers and I all stayed home. I don't think that was a coincidence.

[Q] Playboy: You must have had mixed feelings about an old friend like Dustin beating you out.

[A] Scheider: I'm glad Dustin won the Oscar. I think he deserved the Oscar. But not necessarily for that picture. I don't think Kramer was Dustin's best role, or even his second-best role. But in other years, he was beaten by people who were, in my opinion, not as good as he was. And the Academy has a way of making things like that up to people. And I approve of that. If Dustin couldn't win it for The Graduate or Midnight Cowboy or All the President's Men, I'm glad he did win it for Kramer. I only hope that if I'm ever up there again, the people casting their ballots will remember, that I didn't win it for Jazz.

[Q] Playboy: Readers of this interview won't be aware unless we tell them that we're recording this particular segment at Elaine's, New York's famous literary and theatrical hangout. And while we were talking about Hoffman's Oscar, Woody Allen walked by.

[A] Scheider: Yeah. For a guy who has the reputation of being Mr. Shy, you see him everywhere. He never misses a party.

[Q] Playboy: Allen swept the Oscars in 1978, but one place you didn't see him was at the ceremony. This year, Manhattan, another excellent film, was virtually ignored by the Academy. Was that, in your opinion, an act of revenge?

[A] Scheider: Absolutely. Manhattan was a lovely film, but they were out to get him and they got him good.

[Q] Playboy: But for making Annie Hall, which portrayed Hollywood as slick, crass, mindless and, in one sequence, literally sickening, Allen was adored by the Academy. Yet not going to the awards ceremony--that was a mortal sin.

[A] Scheider: Because that was saying "Fuck you" to the industry that had given him the job. And Woody was very clear about getting that message across. He could have said he had a reason for not going. He could even have said, "I do not choose to come." But, instead, he told them that playing his clarinet in Michael's Pub was more important than their little ceremony; so they shoved that clarinet right down his throat. Their feeling was, "We put up the money for your movies, so why don't you love us?" Everyone wants to be loved. Even the bank.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever played the "dinner-party game"?

[A] Scheider: What's that?

[Q] Playboy: If you could select three people--they could be anyone, living or dead--to have over to your house one night for a dinner party, who would they be?

[A] Scheider: Jesus would be one. And Shakespeare. The third ... hmmm ... I'd want someone more visceral, funnier ... I know: Mel Brooks.

[Q] Playboy: Jesus, Shakespeare and Mel Brooks?

[A] Scheider: That would be perfect. Civilization always needs a Mel Brooks to put things in perspective. He once did a bit on Joan of Arc that just killed me. They're talking for a while, and then he says to her, "Look, you go save France, I gotta wash up." There's a classic irony there that I find present in all great art. Without it, you have something that's merely didactic philosophy, not art. Like, in the last scene of that new film of The Tin Drum. Oskar is leaving on a train, being separated from his grandmother in a very wrenching, tender moment. But just then, in the background, you see a guy run across the screen, throw his bag onto the train and try to jump on. And for a moment, you forget all about Oskar and his grandmother, all you're thinking about is, I hope that son of a bitch makes the train. The two others are saving Germany and he's washing up, and your allegiance keeps shifting between them. It's an incredible moment, of the kind Shakespeare never failed to include. After the king and the prince get through talking about their greatness, the gravedigger comes out to tell what's really going on.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have any fears?

[A] Scheider: I have the constant fear of being revealed as a fraud, that someday somebody's going to say to me, "Scheider, you have no talent. You've been fooling a lot of people for a long time, but the free ride is over now." That's the ultimate flop sweat. For a guy who's really driven, as I am, those moments when you fear that what you're doing is worthless can be terribly frightening. Can be? What am I saying? They are.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been in analysis?

[A] Scheider: I've been on the couch several times, for short periods. Perhaps a year, total, out of the past 18.

[Q] Playboy: The past 18 years happen to be the span of your current marriage. Coincidence?

[A] Scheider: No. I've gone to psychiatrists during the times when I couldn't deal with why my relationship wasn't working. And I usually found out what I had to find out. The problems are never really licked, of course. But I've always gained some insights that have helped me. What I always discover is that my problems have nothing to do with my relationship. They have to do with me, with things that have always troubled me.

[Q] Playboy: Many people who enter analysis never come out. And practically no one is able to jump in and out, as you seem to do, and feel that he is being helped.

[A] Scheider: I have friends who've been in analysis for 15 and 20 years, who feel, or come to feel in the course of the analysis, that they can't function without the help of the doctor. I've never felt that way. But, of course, the doctors I've had have always felt I should have stayed longer than I have. They always feel there's more work to be done. And they're right. But then there's living to be done, too. Also, psychiatry can become a belief system, like a religion, and the moment you start thinking something has all the answers, it has no answers.

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier that actors love to do a death scene. Have you ever pictured your own?

[A] Scheider: Yes, frequently. I'd like something very fast when I'm very old. I imagine myself in my 80s seeing a girl with gorgeous legs on the other side of the street. I start to follow her, step off the curb without looking and get hit by a truck.

[Q] Playboy: You're among the movie stars least interviewed by the press, and you never do TV talk shows. Why?

[A] Scheider: There's an old saying that you never really understand a thing until you can explain it to someone else. The same rule applies, I think, to understanding yourself. You learn who you are by talking to others. And being interviewed is the most intense example of that process. And that's frightening. Finding out who the hell you are is enough to give anyone flop sweat.

"Et tu, Playboy? You're really much better off just looking at 'Jazz' as a movie."

"I'm a guy who could say, 'I never met a woman I didn't like.'"

"God. I think I'm obsessed. But Dustin is 12 degrees higher. I mean, he pushes right into another dimension."

"Jane Fonda bugs a lot of people, but fuck them. She's done it her way."

"You just make up your mind, 'This is what I am today.' They want bald, you're bald. They want hair, you've got hair."

"The shark didn't work in 'Jaws.' Three months, we waited. When it finally did work, we cracked open champagne. It was like the launching of the Titanic."

"I sure tried like hell to get out of 'Jaws 2.' I pleaded insanity. I went crazy in the Beverly Hills Hotel."