Actor Richard Dreyfuss of Jaws says inclusion standards ‘make me vomit’
Jenny Goldsberry
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Actor Richard Dreyfuss went on the record to lament inclusive standards in Hollywood.
Dreyfuss, known for his role in Jaws and, most recently, Murder at Yellowstone City, appeared for a television interview with Margaret Hoover Friday, where Hoover asked him about the changes to the 2024 Academy Awards. From then on, the films eligible for ‘Best Picture’ will have to have a certain percentage of actors or crew from under-represented racial or ethnic groups.
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Hoover asked Dreyfuss what he thought about the new standards.
“They make me vomit,” Dreyfuss said. “Because this is an art form, it’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And no one should be telling me, as an artist, that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is.”
Richard Dreyfuss on PBS
The Oscar-winning actor, who was nominated twice for Academy Awards as “best actor,” scoffed at the idea of people’s feelings being hurt by art. Dreyfuss stated that, in his opinion, there isn’t a “minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to” to the point of receiving extra special treatment.
“This is so patronizing,” Dreyfuss said of the guidelines. “It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children.”
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Hoover pushed the actor on his opinion on blackface, which he defended. Dreyfuss explained that in 1965, Lawrence Olivier was the last White actor to play the Shakespearean character of Othello “brilliantly,” in his opinion. As another example, he said anyone could act in The Merchant of Venice even if they were not Jewish.
Dreyfuss warned movie theater audiences to “anticipate” that their feelings will be hurt in future films.