Richard Dreyfuss, the subject of the USA Film Festival's Master Screen Artist Tribute recently, says the honor makes him feel "partly like a gentleman going to his coronation and partly like a gentleman going to his funeral."
"Aren't I little young to have this type of career retrospective?" he wonders by phone from Los Angeles.At 46, he is the youngest actor to receive the Dallas festival's top honor. But then, he was the youngest to win a best-actor Oscar (for "The Goodbye Girl" at age 29) and one of the few to win for a comedy part.
But Dreyfuss never has done things in an ordinary manner. He made his first big impression in a small but splashy role as Baby Face Nelson in John Milius' "Dillinger." He walked into Milius' office to audition for the part and saw a submachine gun prominently displayed on the macho director's desk.
"I grabbed the gun from his desk with ferocious glee," Dreyfuss says. "John told me it was that look of ferocious glee that made him hire me."
After that, the late '70s were charmed years in which the actor could do no wrong. Dreyfuss starred in three blockbusters, "American Graffiti," "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." And then came the Oscar for "The Goodbye Girl," a box-office smash. But the early '80s brought a series of box-office disappointments.
He rebounded in the last half of the decade with "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," "Tin Men" and "Stakeout" - not blockbusters, but the kind of solid successes that ensure a steady career.
"Ultimately, it doesn't matter to a great extent what I think of a film, although that matters to me. It doesn't matter what other actors might think, although winning the Oscar was of course thrilling. It only matters what the audience thinks. It doesn't even matter so much what the critics think. The critics have the power to hurt me emotionally. If I read them, they can hurt me. So I don't read them."
As an interviewee, Dreyfuss has changed through the years. In late 1977, while talking in New York about "The Goodbye Girl," he was bombastic and engaging, thumping the table with the palm of his hand and saying with mock theatricality: "Too many people want a piece of me! Too many people want to talk to me! I'm not trying to pull a Garbo - but give me a little privacy, puh-leeze!"
And yet, 17 years ago, his eager grin, his expansive hand gestures and overall friendliness gave the impression that he loved being interviewed.
Since then, he has grown increasingly succinct. He prefers not to discuss his previous films at any length. ("I have videos of my old films, and my children watch them. But I never do. Maybe I watch them for five minutes, but not in their entirety.") And he prefers not to discuss his future films. ("I haven't seen them, so I really can't talk about them.")
But his affection for Steven Spielberg, who directed him in "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as well as the less successful "Always," is obvious. At last month's Oscar ceremonies, he introduced the film clip to "Schindler's List" with genuine heartfelt dignity.
"Oh, I was very proud of being chosen to introduce that film clip. `Schindler's List' was a benchmark film, an important, classic film, and I was thrilled to do the introduction. Steven hasn't changed much at all since we made `Jaws' together. He always knew what he was doing. I think it's a safe statement that becoming a billionaire would change most men. But it hasn't changed Steven."
Nor was he surprised at the best-actress Oscar triumph of Holly Hunter, with whom he starred in "Always" and "Once Around." "She was wonderful to work with, and I think her performance in `Broadcast News' was one of the greatest performances ever given by an actress. So `The Piano' was no surprise to me at all."
He also recalls with affection the making of George Lucas' 1973 classic "American Graffiti."
"Making that movie was just a lot of fun. It was like guerrilla theater. We were making a movie that a lot of people simply did not want us to make. There were people at the studio who felt making that film was nothing but a waste of time. So we were running around late at night, sneaking onto people's lawns and shooting footage. It was as if by making `American Graffiti,' we were doing something wonderfully verboten. I cannot claim that I recognized it would be a classic, though. I thought we were just having a blast making a little movie. Everyone else felt it would be a landmark film, but not me."
However, he will not discuss a more recent film, 1987's "Nuts," starring and produced by Barbra Streisand and directed by the late Martin Ritt. When Ritt was honored as the USA Film Festival's Great Director in 1989, he told The Dallas Morning News:
"Barbra was not my favorite girl. When the cast and crew arrived on the set each morning, they expected a huge fight between Barbra and myself. They were never disappointed."
Dreyfuss laughs. "Is that what Marty said? Well, I'll comment on the making of `Nuts,' but only after everyone else involved in the movie is dead."
This fall, Dreyfuss will be seen as a doctor helping a 9-year-old autistic child who has witnessed a murder in "Silent Fall," directed by Bruce Beresford ("Driving Miss Daisy"). Next month, he will start filming "Holland's Opus," about a man whose 30-year career as a music teacher has a profound effect on himself and his family.
"I'm not a musician, but I'm a good listener," the actor says. "And I've always had delusions of quitting acting and becoming a drama teacher."
His own favorite movies are "any of the ones made by Hollywood studios between 1931 and 1960, anything starring Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Carole Lombard, William Powell, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable."
His favorite stars, though, were James Stewart and Henry Fonda, both of whom he eventually met.
"I hosted an honorary evening for James Stewart several years ago at a museum. I got to say all the things I wanted to say for years, and he was everything I had thought and hoped he would be."