Richard Dreyfuss
On Lucas, Spielberg and the horror of Piranha 3D…
The star of Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss, 69, won the Best Actor Oscar for The Goodbye Girl and is now in the 52nd year of his memorable career. One of his best turns, as the Player King in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, can now be seen in a 25th anniversary edition.
In life, are you more like the flamboyant Player King or the ‘everyman’ characters you’re best known for? The Player King, of course – in my daily life, I try to use medieval bathrooms [ laughs]. I’m an actor, and an actor is many, many, many things. But I never had a better gift handed to me than the Player King.
You’ve now been acting for more than 50 years. Do you still get the same juice out of it? I can’t say that I do. I enjoy it as much as ever, but I don’t feel I’ll die if I don’t do it. Hollywood demands that you must keep winning. I remember turning to a friend of mine around the year 2000 and saying, “How often do we have to win in order to win?”
You were winning repeatedly in the 1970s. Did you feel invincible? I felt like I’d won a race that I’d put myself in when I was nine. And I did that two or three times over the next 40 years; I’d lose my place and then regain it. If anyone asked me to do a book about my life, I’d call it The Hunt. I am far more comfortable on the hunt than sitting over my kill and eating it.
The hunt began for you, in Hollywood terms, with American Graffiti. How was working with George Lucas?
He’s the only director I know who doesn’t like directing. We, the actors, rehearsed ourselves, and then he’d come up and say, “Is that the way you want to do it?” and set up the cameras.
People often regard you as Steven Spielberg’s alter ego in Jaws and
Close Encounters…
Steven never said that to me and I never asked it of him. If that was the case, Tom Hanks has now taken that position. He used me in the way he felt was best and I felt best used.
The characters you’ve played are driven and fast-talking and often irritating, but always likeable. Does that likeability come from you?
They are both my qualities – the ability to be irritating [ laughs] and the fact that I am, of course, ultimately likeable! No, these are things that the camera’s magic does to an audience, and an actor has little to do with it. But there are things that people [ would] cast me for when I was younger. One of them was the ability to look up in absolute sincere awe at absolutely nothing!
Did you enjoy getting back in the water for Piranha 3D?
[ Laughs] I never saw the whole film. I was asked to do it and I said no because I was involved in reviving Civic Education in public schools. And then Mr Weinstein made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. It was obviously a great contribution to my non-profit organisation – and my salary! – so I said yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to go see the film.
You play adult Gordie, the writer, in Stand By Me. How much work did that involve?
It was one day. I can’t remember if I even read the script but I had read the novella so I knew exactly where the character was coming from. I never think of Stand By Me as part of my body of work because it was so small an effort. But I had not reckoned with how large an impact the film itself would have. I’m very identified with it. People walk up to me and say nice things.
‘Lucas is the only director I know who doesn’t like directing’