Quotes

[In 1976] People who commit adultery must die. Everyone knows that. Any movie tells you that!

I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance.

Happiness has a bum rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

Actually, when I was a kid I was really more aware of the star and the handprints in Grauman's Chinese more than I was aware of anything else, including the Oscar. I wanted to have a star. I wanted to be able to see, you know, old gum on my star.

I don't think film acting is necessarily a triumph of technique. Film stardom is a friendship that happens between an audience and a performer. Its like you meet someone and you click with that person for whatever reason.

[on Bette Midler] I loved working with Bette. I rarely get to have a good leading lady and Bette and Marsha Mason are the best. I'd work with them again anytime.

The motion picture business is run by corporate thieves.

I enjoyed the journey to the top but then found myself disappointed.

Behind all art is ego and I am an artist and I am unique.

[on Steven Spielberg] Steven Spielberg is the only person I've come across who fits my criteria of genius. And I don't throw that word around. Genius is imagination and attention to detail. The ability to achieve to the minutest detail what you perceive in your imagination. I don't think there's another person on earth who's as great a plot structuralist or better storyteller.

[on James Stewart] You personify for me part of this nation. You symbolize an America that is gentle, ironic, self-deprecating, tough, and emotional.

[2009, on The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001)] I thought I was miscast. He's a character I could empathize with. He's totally human. A physically bigger person should have played him, but it was fun, and it was especially fun because it was true, and it was a really well-written script in that way. But playing him... You know, every actor wants to play the villain. The trick is not to wink at the audience and say, "I'm not him".

[2009, on What About Bob? (1991)] Funny movie. Terribly unpleasant experience. We didn't get along, me and Bill Murray. But I've got to give it to him: I don't like him, but he makes me laugh, even now. I'm also jealous that he's a better golfer than I am.

[2009] Jaws (1975), first time I saw it, I forgot I was in it. True. Totally forgot, and got as scared as everybody else, and it's a great movie. I learned a shitload about my whole life, and I watched Steven [Steven Spielberg] go from being a boy to being a man. He was under so much pressure you couldn't believe. And his shark never worked, so they had to re-conceive as they went, and it was because of that mind-fuck that he made a great film.

I always knew that I could be a star for this whole audience that didn't relate to John Wayne or Al Pacino. An urban, progressive, intellectually-oriented audience, not too macho, people who read, people who listen to Paul Simon and Randy Newman. People like me.

[on The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974)] It was the first time I'd ever seen myself in a feature film as a lead, and all I could remember was the bad moments that I didn't succeed at. I didn't really see the film and the performance as a whole until about ten years later.

It's really a mitzvah for the actor to know when you make people laugh, you are giving them a gift. You are, as Shakespeare said, giving surcease from sorrow. And that's an easy thing to fall in love with.

Acting is the only art form that is based entirely on pretense. The clothes you're wearing are not yours, the words you're saying are not yours, you pretend that you don't see the stagehand and you pretend you don't see the audience - and the audience pretends you're not actors, that you're real life. And that house of pretense creates art and truth. And it is an amazing feeling to make people laugh or make people cry.

I always knew I was going to be an actor and that was that - no doubts, no uncertainties, no changing my mind. And that was when I was like, nine, ten. And it never changed.

I'd like to reinvent radio the way Orson Welles did. I'd like to do Hamlet or I'd like to do a master-class in Hamlet, or I'd like to do something with history.

I much prefer the stage. Much. But I also prefer being paid. I like being paid as a screen actor but working on the stage.

When I saw Jaws (1975) for the first time, I forgot I was in it. It scared the crap out of me. That night, I heard something I'd never heard before. They [the audience] went crazy, and then they silently watched the scroll and then they clapped again.

I wouldn't recommend to a young actor anymore to become an actor because I think the film industry has changed so terribly. The tools in the director's tool kit used to be story, dialogue, character... after that came cinematography and editing. Now it's special effects, editing and we [actors] are way down at the bottom part.

Film acting is about the hollowest experience you can have as an actor. When you do a film, it's out of order and sequence and everyone around you is working -- even directors now are behind the little video thing -- so you're alone. You're working for yourself.

[from his own homepage, The Dreyfuss Civics Initiative] "To teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country...if we don't, someone else will run our country."

[on the death of his 'Mr. Holland's Opus' co-star Jay Thomas]: I was damn glad that he was in that film because I knew him as a rock, someone who you could rely on.

[on the Academy Award diversity rules] They make me vomit. This is an art form. 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.

[on 'The Shark is Broken', a comedy play about the behind-the-scenes of 'Jaws']: I went to see it, to see if it really was gonna hurt, And it did.