12 Actors Who Slammed Their Own Movie Before Release
6. Richard Dreyfuss - Jaws
Steven Spielberg should be thankful he’s not making Jaws now, because if he was the stories of it going wildly over schedule and budget, and working without a finished script, would probably see him kicked off it. Thankfully it was 1975 and studios were a little more patient back then, and let the young Spielberg see the movie through to the end.
One person who didn’t think it would work out is Richard Dreyfuss, who was so disappointed in the experience afterwards that he badmouthed the film in a TV interview before it came out. He blamed the mess on Universal insisting on a particular start date without a finished script and claimed this robbed him of the ability to craft an interesting character and reduced him to a “nebulous function” in the movie.
Snippets of these comments can be found in the Jaws: The Inside Story documentary, with modern day Dreyfuss, explaining he quickly changed his mind after seeing the movie, and blamed his attitude during the interview on being too young and brash to know better.