Where Are They Now? The Stars Of 'Jaws' — 50 Years After Iconic Summer Blockbuster Left Audiences Fearing The Beach

Fifty years later, we still need a bigger boat.

Friday marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1975 classic film JAWS, and the massive shark is still providing thrills and chills to new audiences.

Jaws chewed up the competition when it came out, and became what many consider the first summer blockbuster. It was also the first movie ever to break $100million at the box office, a milestone films still strive to achieve today.

The movie went on to spawn three sequels and became a pop culture mainstay.

Its stars went on to become legendary figures of their own, RadarOnline.com can report. And though many are now gone, their fin-tastic legacy will live forever.

Popular '70s star Roy Scheider, who played Police Chief Martin Brody, was Oscar-nominated for 1971's The French Connection and the 1979 musical, All That Jazz.

His famous Jaws quote, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," was an ad-lib director Steven Spielberg liked so much he kept it in the final cut of the film.

In 2004, Scheider was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He died of a staph infection after a nearly 3-year battle with the cancer on February 10, 2008, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.

He was 75 years old.

Acclaimed actor Robert Shaw (Captain Quint) had a distinguished career before Jaws. He was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his role as Henry VIII in the 1966 drama film A Man for All Seasons and played mobster Doyle Lonnegan in 1973's The Sting.

Shaw was also a notable writer, winning the 1962 Hawthornden Prize for his novel The Sun Doctor. His novel and play The Man in the Glass Booth was an international success and turned into a film in 1975.

A notorious drinker, he died of a heart attack at 51 in 1978. "He was a perfect gentleman whenever he was sober … one drink and he turned into a son of a b----," Scheider once said of his co-star.

Shaw's body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered near his home in Tourmakeady, Ireland. A stone memorial to him was unveiled there in his honor in August 2008, three decades after his death.

The hippie-like oceanographer Matt Hooper was played by Richard Dreyfuss. The acclaimed actor went on to nab an Oscar for the 1977 rom-com, The Goodbye Girl, but briefly derailed his career with drugs. He rebounded and has since had dozens of film roles.

In 1989, Dreyfuss reunited with Spielberg on Always, a remake of A Guy Named Joe in which he co-starred with Holly Hunter. He also reunited with his Close Encounters of the Third Kind co-star Teri Garr for the comedy Let It Ride.

Dreyfuss had a starring role opposite Bill Murray in the 1991 comedy What About Bob?, as a psychiatrist driven to insanity by a particularly obsessive new patient. That same year, he produced and starred as Georges Picquart in Prisoner of Honor, an HBO movie about the historical Dreyfus Affair.

Now 77, Dreyfuss has yet to slow down – with at least three projects currently in development.

The shark's first meal, Chrissie Watkins, played by Susan Backlinie, was a stuntwoman who convinced director Steven Spielberg to use her as an actress.

Backlinie's scene in Jaws, which famously opens the movie, took three days to shoot.

Attached to her cut-off jeans were metal plates that anchored ropes pulled by groups of men in opposite directions, giving the appearance of being dragged by an unseen force underwater.

Other than flippers to help her, she stayed afloat only by the strength of her swimming. Spielberg has called Backlinie's sequence "one of the most dangerous" stunts he's ever directed.

After a few other roles, she eventually became a computer accountant. But she was still a popular presence at "JawsFest" events and enjoyed scuba diving.

Backlinie died from a heart attack at her home in Ventura, California, on May 11, 2024, at the age of 77.