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Martha’s Vineyard actress, famed for Jaws role, dies of COVID-19 complications

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — Lee Fierro, the Martha’s Vineyard actress who played a grieving mother in Jaws, has died from COVID-19.

The 91-year-old had moved off the island in recent years but has long been famous for her portrayal of Mrs. Kintner.

“I remember her a lot over the years because she was one of the few people that were in Jaws that were, you know, from the island. Over the years you bump into her, she did little plays on the island,” Jeffery Voorhees, who played her son, Alex Kintner, in the movie.

Voorhees still lives on Martha’s Vineyard and said even after she moved away, Fierro visited him on the island just a few years ago.

“Lots of little things you remember about Lee over the years and you know, as I said, she’s from the island and she just moved off the island like two or three years ago,” he said. “But you’d bump into her once in a while because she was still doing her acting and lots of little plays on the island and stuff, and she was a sweetie.”

While shooting on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1974, director Steven Spielberg made use of many locals for set construction, background extras, various other jobs and just a few bigger roles.

“Well it was funny because everybody is like, ‘Your mother was really good.’ You have to break [it to them] guess what? That wasn’t my [real] mother,” Voorhees said.

Fierro’s character famously slaps Chie Brody, played by the late Roy Scheider, and Voorhees said that seminal moment gave rise to a strange request.

“That was the biggest thing for years,” he said. “People would just run into her in the street and that was the request. Can you slap me in the face like you slap Brody in the face? And she did it for years. Finally, she said, ‘No, I just gave up on that. I didn’t want to do it anymore.’”

Fierro was reportedly residing at an assisted living facility off the island when she contracted coronavirus recently. She was a champion of the arts on the island and mentored more than a thousand children through programs on the island, where she lived for more than 40 years.

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