The longtime actress and stuntwoman who starred in the iconic opening scene in Jaws died this weekend in California, TMZ reported. Susan Backlinie passed away of a heart attack at her home in Santa Monica on Saturday morning, her husband Harvey Swindall and agent Matthew Templeton told TMZ. Backlinie’s very first acting gig was her most famous—she booked the role of Chrissy Watkins in the shark horror flick in 1975, playing the ill-fated skinny-dipper who gets thrashed and then chomped by the titular megalodon. Backlinie teamed up with director Steven Spielberg again in 1979 for a spoof of the scene in his film 1941, where her character encounters a Japanese submarine instead of the shark. After Jaws, Backlinie held a number of small parts in other movies, but her first performance was by far her most notable. In an interview last year, she recalled the freezing water she had to film in all those decades ago, but expressed her love for the movie and continued appearing at conventions across the country. Backlinie was 77 years old.
Read it at TMZ
