The animosity had been building for years when Oscar-winning Jaws actor Richard Dreyfuss sat down at a San Francisco restaurant for dinner with his third wife and two of his grown-up children in 2022.
The evening started badly and went downhill from there. Eldest son Ben, now 39, was, by his own admission, ‘stoned and drunk’ and already unhappy after his sister, Emily, crashed his car on the way to the restaurant.
Before long, a host of unresolved resentments had exploded into the open. It began with a row about nepotism. Then, according to Ben: ‘We all started to scream at each other about a completely separate tangent over who is to blame for what.’
And just ‘who is to blame for what’ is, we now know, the canker at the heart of this once close family.
Last week, Ben tore the lid off the blame game that blew up at the dinner table that day.
He did so in a series of now deleted posts on X on November 13, followed one week later with a lengthy post on Substack in which he shared personal emails between himself and his father, including what he said was their last communication, back in January 2024.
In them, Ben explained how his family had been at war since November 2017.
That’s when Ben took to his father’s Twitter – an account he ran at the time – and posted a comment in support of a confessional article written by younger brother Harry and published on BuzzFeed.
Last week, Ben (left, with Dreyfuss, right, in 2013) tore the lid off the blame game that blew up at the dinner table that day
Under the headline, ‘When I Was 18, Kevin Spacey Groped Me,’ Harry claimed that the Usual Suspects actor placed his hand on his thigh at a London apartment. Harry was in the city visiting his father, who was appearing in a play Spacey was directing at the Old Vic.
‘Centimeter by centimeter, Kevin crawled his hand from my thigh over toward my crotch,’ Harry wrote. ‘My mind went blank. Suddenly, he had completed his journey and now he had all of me in his hand.’
Spacey denied the allegations. He was found not liable in a 2022 harassment lawsuit in New York and was acquitted of sexual assault by a jury in London’s High Court the following year.
But the message posted on Dreyfuss’s account back in November 2017 read: ‘I love my son @harrydreyfuss more than I could explain with all the words in the world. And I am so incredibly proud of him right now.’
It is not clear whether Ben consulted with his father before making this supporting statement. But according to Ben it ‘prompted someone to MeToo,’ his father.
That same month, writer Jessica Teich, accused Dreyfuss of exposing himself to her in his trailer in the mid-1980s.
At the time the actor denied any wrongdoing and said he was ‘horrified and bewildered,’ that he had misread what he claimed was ‘a consensual seduction ritual.’
Publicly he appeared to have put it all behind him. Privately, according to Ben, it was a very different story. To this day, Ben said: ‘He blames us for that. This led to years of acrimony.’
Digging into the discord, Ben also revealed that he and his siblings ‘have no money from my dad’ because ‘my dad has no money. If he did, we wouldn’t get it.’
Dreyfuss claimed poverty in a 2016 interview with the Daily Mail, without revealing how he lost his money.
Ben deleted his X posts out of ‘self-loathing.’ But if his father hoped that was the end of it, he was sorely disappointed.
Because just last week, on November 21, Ben attempted to explain his family’s continued estrangement by his last email exchange with his father in that extensive Substack post.
‘It’s long and pathetic, and he comes off worse than I do, but I’m not exactly covered in glory either,’ Ben wrote.
The initial email Ben sent to his father was a heart-rendering plea from a son for reconciliation with a father he clearly still loves and admires.
He apologized for hurtful things he has said to his father and implored him to put past tensions behind them: ‘I’m your son. I don’t get it. Don’t you want to fix it? I desperately want to fix it with you.’
In his reply – written mostly in capital letters – Dreyfuss accused his son of being fixated on money and seemed to hold a deep grievance about that 2022 meal which descended into a public screaming match.
Ben also revealed that he and his siblings ‘have no money from my dad’ because ‘my dad has no money. If he did, we wouldn’t get it.’ (Pictured: Dreyfuss with his children – Ben, Emily and Harry – and second wife, Janelle Lacey, right, in 2000)
In his reply – written entirely in capital letters – Dreyfuss accused his son of being fixated on money and seemed to hold a deep grievance about that 2022 meal which descended into a public screaming match
On November 21, Ben attempted to explain his family’s continued estrangement by his last email exchange with his father in that extensive Substack post
He said Ben and Emily ‘BOTH ADMITTED TO LYING TO ME ABOUT HOW YOU HATED ME FOR TEN YEARS’ and criticized his son for writing to him ‘WITHOUT ANY ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN ALL THE THINGS THAT YOU SAID ON THE LAST NIGHT AT THE RESTAURANT.’Â
The bilious tone is at odds with Dreyfuss’ public persona.
In July 2022 – a few months before the acrimonious dinner – Dreyfuss posted on X that Ben’s birth was ‘the most traumatic and emotional moment of my life’ and he was ‘incredibly proud of all my children.’
But according to Ben, this pride had turned to bitterness, underlined by the last line of his father’s rancorous message: ‘AT LEAST KEEP THIS ONE LETTER. IT’LL BE THE LAST ONE UNLESS YOU STOP BEING A COWARD. OR START BEING BETTER THAN YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER.’
Ben went onto share his reply to his father, in which he gave his account of why he behaved badly at the meal, and apologized. He said he never received a reply.
Soon after her brother’s post, Emily, 42, – who works as the Culture Editor at The San Francisco Standard – confirmed her estrangement from her father on X: ‘Ben and I have different experiences of this sadness, but I’m relieved it’s finally out in the open now.’
Her posts too have since been deleted, and she did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.
Dreyfuss has not commented on the veracity of the email exchange published by his son and attempts to contact him via his Dreyfuss Civics Initiative and personal merchandising website were unsuccessful.
But it’s all a long fall from grace for the once swaggering actor who endured teasing about his weight, looks and acting skills from a grouchy Robert Shaw on the set of Jaws in 1974, only to emerge as the breakout star of the film, super-charging the 27-year-old’s acting career.
He went on to work with Steven Spielberg again in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and in 1978 he won he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of an aspiring actor who falls in love with a young single mother in The Goodbye Girl.
His life went downhill in the 1980s when he became addicted to cocaine, and he was arrested in 1982 after crashing his car into a tree.
It’s all a long fall from grace for the once swaggering actor (right) who endured teasing about his weight, looks and acting skills from a grouchy Robert Shaw on the set of Jaws in 1974
He went on to work with Steven Spielberg again in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind
In May last year, a cinema in Massachusetts was forced to apologize after Dreyfuss appeared on stage in a dress and made sexist and transphobic remarks and insulted Barbra Streisand
Pictured: Dreyfuss and his third wife Svetlana Erokhin in 2023
He spent some time in rehab but emerged clean and continued to have a respected film career in the 1990s, albeit without the blockbuster smashes and Oscar success of his early career.
At the same time, he was raising a family: he married screenwriter Jeramie Rain in 1985, and they welcomed their children Emily in 1983, Ben in 1986, and Harry in 1990.
Dreyfuss and Rain divorced in 1994, but he continued to have a close relationship with his kids, telling an interviewer in 2011 that having children was ‘profoundly affecting… like on the top of the universe.’
Emily and Ben both went on to work in the media. Harry tried to follow in his father’s footsteps and studied directing at Fordham University before moving in the same direction as his siblings and becoming a writer.
Today, the tragic details of a family tearing itself apart come as the 78-year-old Dreyfuss enters his twilight years beset by ill health, money problems and public disgrace.
Back in 2016, he told The Daily Mail he was accepting jobs just ‘for the money.’
In May last year, a cinema in Massachusetts was forced to apologize after Dreyfuss appeared on stage in a dress and made sexist and transphobic remarks and insulted Barbra Streisand.
The actor has spoken publicly about his battle with bipolar disorder, and in July this year he contracted viral bronchitis. He shared a video on his Instagram account in which he looked visibly unwell as he apologized for not being able to attend a Jaws fan convention.
He still posts on Instagram, including shots with his third wife, Svetlana, but there are no longer social media messages in support of his children.
Instead, a career that began with one of the most fabled spats in cinema history, as he clashed with fellow actors on the set of Jaws, looks set to end with another, far more personal, estrangement.
