Lorraine Gary

Lorraine Gary brings a reassuring ordinariness to the domestic scenes of Jaws (1975). Playing Ellen Brody alongside Roy Scheider’s Martin Brody, she helps make a family we can care about before the thriller puts them under strain. Her quiet authority suits Steven Spielberg’s patience with his characters; she need not make a fuss to be worth watching. We rate the film so highly partly because its people matter, and Gary’s warmth gives that suspense something to work with.

Jaws was her first major film role, following television guest work, and Ellen remained the part to which her film career kept returning. She played her again in Jaws 2 (1978), with more screen time, while Car Wash (1976) and Spielberg’s 1941 (1979) gave her room for comedy. Those credits are a useful correction to the idea that she could only play a worried mother. She retired after 1941, then returned once for Jaws: The Revenge.

The return gives her far too much worrying to do. In Jaws: The Revenge (1987), Gary makes Ellen’s fear convincing, but the film keeps asking her to repeat it until the performance has little room to develop. We were glad of her scenes with Michael Caine because the ease between Ellen and his Hoagie Newcombe gives us a rest from that repeated alarm. Their romance lets Gary be warm company, and for a while we can see why these people might enjoy being together.

The film is poor, and Gary’s efforts cannot make the revenge plot or the attacks convincing. Nor should her effectiveness as Ellen narrow our idea of what she could do: the comedy work belongs in the picture too. What the scenes with Caine make clear is how much the later film wastes by keeping her anxious. Choose Jaws for her warmth in a thriller that gives us good reason to be afraid.