Susan Backlinie from the iconic 'Jaws' scene that still haunts Hollywood dead
Susan Backlinie passed away at the age of 77. The actress was famous for her performance in the iconic shark attack scene in Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws. Her husband caused her death.
Susan Backlinie died on May 11 at 77 at her home in California. The news of her death was announced by her agent, Matthew Templeton. Later, the actress's husband, Havey Swindall, revealed that she died of a heart attack. In a conversation with TMZ, he admitted that he would greatly miss, as he put it, "the most amazing person."
Susan Backlinie appeared in many films, mostly as a stuntwoman. She went down in movie history thanks to the scene from the movie "Jaws" (1975). She plays a girl who runs into the sea to bathe but ultimately becomes the first victim of a great shark. This sequence is still impressive today but was not easy to shoot. Backlinie wore jeans under the water, to which lines were attached. Specialists in special effects pulled on them using a system of wheels.
Rumours even circulated that Backlinie was close to drowning while working on her scene. However, this is not true. Director Steven Spielberg did not warn the woman that she would be submerged, as he wanted to provoke a more natural reaction in this way. He indeed succeeded.
Backlinie revealed how exhausting the overall shooting schedule for some key scenes of "Jaws" was a year ago. She confessed that she spent up to 14 hours a day for three days at Martha's Vineyard, filming underwater scenes: "We would start at around 6 or 7 in the morning until about 9 in the evening because of the light. By the end of each day, I was exhausted," the actress admitted.
However, overall, she did not recall her experience badly. "I really like it when people tell me to this day that because of that scene, they didn't go into the water for many years," she said in one of the interviews.
"Jaws" transformed Hollywood
Moreover, Backlinie participated not only in one of the most famous films in history. "Jaws" is also groundbreaking for promoting so-called blockbusters, i.e., high-budget films released by large studios mainly during the summer period. This is all the more interesting because the film itself had a budget of about £7 million. Spielberg initially received £2.7 million for the film but significantly exceeded it. It paid off, as the film was the most profitable in cinema history for two years, not counting inflation.
