Please Rewind Talent Wall

Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Dreyfuss has built a screen career around a quality that is difficult to fake: the sense that his characters are always thinking, worrying or arguing their way through the moment. He can bring nervous momentum to a scene without losing its human stakes, making intelligence, impatience and vulnerability feel like parts of the same personality. Born in Brooklyn on October 29, 1947, Dreyfuss began acting in his youth and made early appearances across television, theatre and film. After brief parts in The Graduate and Valley of the Dolls, he took on more substantial work, including a key role in American Graffiti and his first film lead in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. His performances in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind placed him at the centre of two major 1970s films, while The Goodbye Girl brought him the 1978 Academy Award for Best Actor for playing a struggling actor. The films on Please Rewind’s Talent Wall catch Dreyfuss at three different points in the following decade. He appears in The Competition from 1980, then in Down and Out in Beverly Hills in 1986 and Stakeout in 1987. The latter two formed part of his return to prominent Hollywood work during the 1980s. Together, the three films offer a useful route back into a performer whose energy can sharpen an ensemble and whose reactions are often as important as his dialogue. Dreyfuss later reunited with Steven Spielberg for Always and appeared opposite Bill Murray in What About Bob? He received a second Academy Award nomination for playing Glenn Holland in Mr. Holland’s Opus. His work has continued across movies, television and the stage, including portrayals of Dick Cheney in W. and Bernie Madoff in Madoff. Across those varied parts, his most distinctive quality remains the same: an alert, unsettled presence that keeps a character’s inner argument visible.