Starting at 5:08: “I can sincerely tell you that I tried to get out of [Jaws]. Because I had done a film in Canada called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. And I turned Steven [Spielberg] down. And he said ‘why?’ I said ‘because this is going to be a bitch to shoot, and I’m really lazy.’ And then I saw Duddy Kravitz. For the first time. And I said to myself, ‘If somehow this film is sold in the United States, I will never work again.’ I had to get that [film] behind me.
“So I just did what every normal human would do. I begged for the [Jaws] part. On my knees, And then Steven gave it to me. [To do that Steven] had to deal-break another actor out of the film. I felt like shit. I got the role and did it as well as I could, and that made me ‘a something.’ I wasn’t a star, but I wasn’t not a star.”
Why doesn’t Dreyfuss talk about Stakeout? Or American Graffiti?
What’s Daughter of the Wolf?