Elizabeth Lee Fierro (February 13, 1929 – April 5, 2020) was an American actress and theater promoter best known for playing Mrs. Kintner in the '' Jaws'' film franchise.

Personal life and career

She was born in 1929 in New York as Elizabeth Lee Beers.Matt Taylor: ''Jaws: Memories from Martha's Vineyard''. Titan Books, London, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78116-302-3, p. 71–73. Her father was an architect. In 1949, she married the actor Marvin Stephens. The marriage produced four children. The family moved to Pennsylvania, where she joined the ensemble of the Hedgerow Repertory Theatre in Rose Valley. As she had little time for theatre performances as a mother, she began to give acting lessons. Occasionally, she also directed theatre productions. After her divorce from Stephens, she married Bernard Fierro, with whom she had another child. She first visited

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, lying just south of Cape Cod. It is known for being a popular, affluent summer colony, and includes the smaller peninsula Chappaquiddick Isla ...

in 1965 and settled there with her family in 1969, by which time she was no longer acting and was mainly working as a childbirth educator. Although Fierro had only training as an actress in theater but not as a screen actress, she was cast as Mrs. Kintner in

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...

's 1975 film '' Jaws''. In a now famous scene she slapped the police chief, played by

Roy Scheider Roy Richard Scheider (; November 10, 1932 – February 10, 2008) was an American actor and amateur boxer who achieved fame with his leading and supporting roles in celebrated films from the 1970s through to the mid-1980s. He was nominated for t ...

. The scene required several takes. Fierro recalled slapping the actor playing the police chief 17 times, saying "I slapped him hard with a loose wrist, which was what I was taught in acting school." Fierro reportedly had also "objected to the profanity" of the scene's dialogue as originally drafted, and the director, Steven Spielberg, wanted dialogue that accorded with Fierro's "everywoman looks," so the scene's dialogue was rewritten the day before it was filmed. From 1974 to 2017 Fierro was artistic director of the Island Theatre Workshop in Martha's Vineyard, where she mentored hundreds of aspiring actors. Kevin Ryan, the Theater's board president in 2020, who had worked with her for 30 years, estimated that Fierro had mentored and taught theater to more than 1,000 children, and recalled Fierro as "fiercely dedicated to the mission of teaching. She, no matter what it was, would stay at it and get the job done." In 2013, Fierro received a "Woman of the Year" award by Women Empowered to Make Healthy Choices for her local theater workshop. In mid-2017, Fierro moved to

Aurora, Ohio Aurora is a city in northwestern Portage County, Ohio, United States. A suburb in between Akron and Cleveland, the population was 17,239 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Akron metropolitan area. Some say Aurora was the name of the daught ...

, to an assisted living facility, to be closer to her family. She died from

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

on April 5, 2020. She was 91 years old.

Filmography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fierro, Lee 1929 births 2020 deaths American people of Italian descent Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Ohio Actresses from Massachusetts Place of birth missing People from Martha's Vineyard Jaws (franchise) 20th-century American actresses 21st-century American actresses