'He was at the piano and he did not respond to me...' Richard Dreyfuss recalls Jaws moment that shook Steven Spielberg
Richard Dreyfuss has recalled the moment he had to tell Jaws director Steven Spielberg that Robert Shaw - who had played shark hunter Quint in the blockbuster - had died in 1978.
Richard Dreyfuss has revealed Jaws director Steven Spielberg was stunned into silence when he was told that Robert Shaw had died.
The Hollywood actor - who played oceanographer Matt Hooper in the 1975 great white shark thriller - had the responsibility of informing Spielberg that Shaw, who played shark hunter Quint in Jaws, had died of a heart attack aged 51 in August 1978.
Dreyfuss drove over to Spielberg's house to tell him in person that Shaw had passed away and he can recall the director sitting at his piano unable to respond to the tragic news.
In a two-part interview with The Daily Jaws podcast, Dreyfuss said: "Nobody expected that some of us would die.
"Robert had a heart attack and died within two years of the film's release. I've never had such a loss, ever.
"I took that news and I drove over to Steven's house and I walked in and he was at the piano playing and he did not respond to me when I spoke to him, because he couldn't.
"At a certain point I realised he was not going to be answering in English, he's got something else going on. He certainly did, he lost his Quint way too soon."
It has long been claimed that Dreyfuss and Shaw had a difficult working relationship whilst filming Jaws - which also starred Roy Scheider as police chief Martin Brody - with documentaries like Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log and the Broadway and West End play The Shark Is Broken making those claims.
But the pair had great mutual respect for one another and Shaw actually suggested that he and Dreyfuss should star in a Shakespeare play together during a break from filming Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard – which served as Jaws' fictional Amity Island.
The Goodbye Girl star Dreyfuss recalled: "One afternoon Robert and I had taken a break and were laying on these bunks, and all of a sudden I heard Robert say, 'I know, I'll play the ghost to your Hamlet if you play the Fool to my Lear.
“And I said, 'You've got it, but not for 10 years. And he said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because you'll blow me off the stage, that's why. And it would take 10 years to build up the life experience necessary.' That is a moment I'll never forget, because I knew that was not only predicting my future, but it was laying out a certain kind of trust in who were to one another as actors. And it was great."
Shaw passed away in Ireland from a heart attack on 28 August 1978, while driving from Castlebar, County Mayo, to his home in Tourmakeady.
He had been driving with his wife Virginia Jansen and their son when he suddenly became ill, stopped his car, stepped out, and then collapsed and lost consciousness on the roadside.
