Richard Dreyfuss has revealed Jaws director Steven Spielberg was shocked into silence when he was advised that Robert Shaw had died.
The Hollywood actor – who performed oceanographer Matt Hooper within the 1975 nice white shark thriller – had the duty of informing Spielberg that Shaw, who performed shark hunter Quint in Jaws, had died of a coronary heart assault aged 51 in August 1978.
Dreyfuss drove over to Spielberg’s home to inform him in person who Shaw had handed away and he can recall the director sitting at his piano unable to answer the tragic information.
In a two-part interview with The Each day Jaws podcast, Dreyfuss mentioned: “No person anticipated that a few of us would die.
“Robert had a coronary heart assault and died inside two years of the movie’s launch. I’ve by no means had such a loss, ever.
“I took that information and I drove over to Steven’s home and I walked in and he was on the piano taking part in and he didn’t reply to me after I spoke to him, as a result of he could not.
“At a sure level I realised he was not going to be answering in English, he is acquired one thing else happening. He definitely did, he misplaced his Quint method too quickly.”
It has lengthy been claimed that Dreyfuss and Shaw had a troublesome working relationship while filming Jaws – which additionally starred Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody – with documentaries like Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log and the Broadway and West Finish play The Shark Is Damaged making these claims.
However the pair had nice mutual respect for each other and Shaw really advised that he and Dreyfuss ought to star in a Shakespeare play collectively throughout a break from filming Jaws on Martha’s Winery – which served as Jaws’ fictional Amity Island.
The Goodbye Lady star Dreyfuss recalled: “One afternoon Robert and I had taken a break and had been laying on these bunks, and impulsively I heard Robert say, ‘I do know, I will play the ghost to your Hamlet in case you play the Idiot to my Lear.
“And I mentioned, ‘You have acquired it, however not for 10 years. And he mentioned, ‘Why?’ I mentioned, ‘Since you’ll blow me off the stage, that is why. And it will take 10 years to construct up the life expertise essential.’ That could be a second I will always remember, as a result of I knew that was not solely predicting my future, but it surely was laying out a sure sort of belief in who had been to 1 one other as actors. And it was nice.”
Shaw handed away in Eire from a coronary heart assault on 28 August 1978, whereas driving from Castlebar, County Mayo, to his dwelling in Tourmakeady.
He had been driving together with his spouse Virginia Jansen and their son when he abruptly grew to become sick, stopped his automobile, stepped out, after which collapsed and misplaced consciousness on the roadside.
