I'm Richard Dreyfuss and this is my career timeline, and it's all true because I have no secrets.

Okay, I'm nine years old and we've just moved from New York and life Mother is in the kitchen and I say to her, I want to be an actor and she said, Don't just talk about it And I got up and went down to the local Jewish Community Center and audition for a part.

And although I didn't get the part I wanted, I did get gassed in that show, Really, Without a break of any kind, I proceeded to work as an actor at the Jewish Community Center for maybe 20 years.

I was doing a TV show and I was working with Richard something or other.

As we were doing the scene.

He fucked up the line and I went got into the silence that was created from that folk cut Peter to expiry.

Lee shows writer director, walked over to me.

He said, You don't I do that.

By the time he got to the end of that sentence, I was about that.

But I never did that again.

She isn't here.

She said that she'd be here if we needed her.

No, she's not here.

The actors oath.

You know what the actors open.

Do you know how to write overs?

Are you kidding me?

I was raised on a ranch outside of Vegas.

No, I don't speak Italian.

And no, I don't know howto flip a rope in those meetings.

He don't tell the truth.

Then on the day that we shot all of the ranch stuff, I went up to the head Wrangler and I said So, um, have you yet?

He said, This is hard.

This is really hard.

I knew I was doing.

And so you put the two kids on a buckboard next to me The moment the word action was uttered, it was followed hastily by cut Kat Kat because they knew I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

And I was out of control.

She's all right.

She's upset and she screamed.

But it's okay now.

Shall we get the cops?

What?

I'll get the cops Hey, wait a minute.

First of all, every young actor in America wanted the role and the gradual my audition because all I wanted was to get to Mike Nichols.

I wanted to get there the night before.

I was supposed to see night.

His office calls and says he had to fly to New York last night in order to see young actor named Dustin Hoffman.

And I could just sense myself reacting to the name Dustin Hoffman.

And I knew it was like immortality went right up the back of my neck.

And then he did the greatest thing in the world.

Mike Nichols, who is known as a great gentleman, proved it because he offered every actor who ever auditioned for that part.

Another part in the movie.

And that's where shall I call the cops?

I'll call the cops, right, boys?

You can all go back to your rooms now.

Well, take a body step, Daddy.

My first film role was in a film called The Young Runaways and directed by a man named Dreyfuss.

I had to be outfitted and in his best suit, the costumer did 1/2 hour on short after, you know everybody are our effort.

Half hour of this.

I said, Excuse me.

Are you trying to tell me that I'm short?

And I couldn't wait to get back to tell my best friends about this crazy costumer?

And I did.

I went to Rob Reiner, Carl Barack and Albert Brooks and I went I have the funniest story to tell.

At that moment, I realized for the first time that I was short.

I didn't know how to handle this.

I still don't.

I'm in therapy for wrong.

But we, uh, we've made friends with I can sincerely tell you that I tried desperately to get out of that one because I had done a film in Canada called The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

I turned Steven down.

He said Why?

I said, because this is gonna be a bitch to shoot, and I'm really lazy.

And then I saw duty Kravitz for the first time, and I said to myself, If somehow this film is sold in the United States, I will never work again.

I had to get that behind me.

And so I just did what every normal human would do.

I beg for the part on my knees, and then Stephen gave it to me and Steven said we had a deal.

Break another actor out of the film.

I felt like shit, I I got the role and active as well as I could, and that made me of something.

I wasn't a star, but I wasn't not a star.

I knew that Stephen was known At that time as Thea Uncrowned Prince of Hollywood, I wrote a piece for one of his tributes that said, There is a man who is a film director in Hollywood and I spent a summer with him.

I watched a young director to be turned from a boy into a man.

During the shooting of that, I watched this guy, a crew authority and a crew confidence, and it was amazing.

And it was so subtle.

He told me how to shoot Jaws without one interesting shot.

There is not one shot in the film stands up, but the story will hit you right between the eyes, and you will never, ever forget that experience.

Stephen told me towards the end of the shoot of Jones what his next film's gonna be about.

I knew if I didn't get this part.

I was going to get rim.

I walked by Stephen's office every day and bad mouth every actor in Hollywood.

Only time I ever did that.

Andi, I said, Uh, Pacino has no sense of humor.

De Niro's crazy.

Finally, after weeks that he looked up at me and said, You got the part.

It was only the only film I've ever done or could conceive of.

Doing that was, has filled with potential and greatness as that film, that part will outlive us all.

So what's the deal?

I mean, I got a lease here in my pocket.

You gonna honor it?

What?

I got a phone call to read another script called The Goodbye Girl.

It was what happened in real life to Dustin Hoffman when he was not trying to prove how terrible his life Waas really apparently all happened.

I thought it was hysterically funny.

Three weeks later, we were in rehearsal, and we rehearsed by reading the script in the morning and reading the script in the afternoon and doing it all over again.

The next day, we came intimately familiar with that script.

Then the next week we were introduced to the complete set of The Goodbye Girl, which was true down to the ashtrays.

True and nothing was as brilliantly conceived as that.

And then we finished this movie and then got praised.

My agent calls and says, You've been nominated for best actor.

I've been nominated Hello And I said, Who else was nominated?

And he said, Woody Allen, John Travolta, Marcello Mustard, Honey and Richard Burton And I said, I'm gonna win.

It was the happiest moment of my life.

Real empire.

Someone said to me, How could you play Cheney?

When I said, There's a little bit of Cheney in all of us and there is and was and will always be.

I didn't have to go very far because I knew it was right here, right there.

And I didn't have to be persuaded.

I had been part of the crowd, all within me.

And I could pick choose the appropriate character.

Everyone has Mahatma Gandhi and everyone has Dick Cheney.

No kidding.

Where is my son?

If she paid the ransom, they'd be here by now.

Toner of the Wolf Waas.

Apart where I got to play truly psychopathic, completely, utterly insane.

Be steel killer so much.

I have a theory about where you find actors like that.

It's always that you find them right inside.

You're sitting on a set for the witch.

I'm nervous.

And I'm saying to myself why nervous?

You made your case.

That this is gonna be it for the rest of your life.

Why?

You nervous?

I then got up, walked over to the lens and I leaned in and said, I like you.

I want you like me.

I have no other ambition.

This is it.

I leaned in and blow kissed.

Yes, I was never nervous again.

I don't know why, but I became overnight 10 times the actor I had been.