Richard Dreyfuss talks Jaws, ISIL and upcoming drama, Madoff

Dreyfuss starred alongside Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider in Jaws, which marked its 40th anniversary with a free screening at Diff’s open-air cinema on JBR beach on Saturday night.

Actor Richard Dreyfuss. Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images for DIFF
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Veteran actor Richard Dreyfuss, who visited the Dubai International Film Festival to introduce a special screening of Jaws, took the opportunity to sound a cautionary note about the threat the world is facing from ISIL.

"They don't have fear," he told The National. "They think that they can get away with murder. It's very much the way England and the United States were in 1937 – Hitler was like, 'I'm going to take over the world, I'm going to kill these people and I am going to take the world back to the fifth century,' and no one believed he would really do it.

“Right now, nobody believes that ISIL is really coming. Well ... ISIL is already here, and if we don’t have a stronger idea than they do, we’re toast.”

Dreyfuss starred alongside Robert Shaw and Roy Scheider in Jaws, which marked its 40th anniversary with a free screening at Diff's open-air cinema on JBR beach on Saturday night.

As well as his concerns about world events, Dreyfuss also talked about his career, and Jaws in particular. He is clearly proud to have been a part of such a seminal part of cinema history – the film is often credited with launching the concept of the big summer blockbuster. Dreyfuss agrees.

"[Director] Steven [Spielberg] did a pretty good job inventing the blockbuster," he says. " [Jaws] didn't reinvent cinema, but it reinvented distribution and made pristine their ability to hide the profits, and I take my hat off to them. What's truly amazing is that I'm in a film that 40 years later is as powerful ­today as it was then. That's amazing. I don't know of any other film that did that."

Dreyfuss, who is 68, is now semi-retired but he returns to the screen in the upcoming ABC drama Madoff, the first trailer for which was released at the weekend.

He stars as Bernie Madoff, the real-life banker whose ­fraudulent investment scheme is often cited as a major cause of the 2008 global economic ­crisis.

“The world will never recover from [the financial collapse]”, says Dreyfuss. “And what is remarkable is that the US financial industry has successfully distracted the entire world and made Bernie the villain for all of their crimes.

“Capitalism as a theory is ­perfect. It’s the perfect partner to democracy, if you fulfil it. That means you hold people ­accountable.”

Is the show trying to ­underline that? “Not really,” he says. “ABC Network are terrified that they’ll get sued. Even though the ­people they’re afraid of ­suing them are the last people that would ever sue them, because that would mean they’d have to open their books up – but that doesn’t mean anything.”

His views on terrorism and global finance may make for pessimistic reading, but the ­actor did at least seem to be ­enjoying his time in Dubai.

“When you come to a place and intelligent people are ­looking at you, and admiring you, and saying how great you are, you’re having a good day,” he said with a smile.

cnewbould@thenational.ae