Richard Dreyfuss was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947 and began his acting career at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center when he was eight years old. After portraying ‘Baby Face Nelson’ in 1973's Dillinger, Richard’s breakout performance came in American Graffiti, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best actor. Then Steven Spielberg cast him as ‘Hooper’, the cocky shark expert in Jaws, and next as the UFO obsessed ‘Roy Neary’ in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In 1978 Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role as ‘Elliot Garfield’ in Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl. At just 29 years old, as a celebrated star on the rise, he became the youngest actor to ever receive this honor. In his personal life, Richard Dreyfuss, who has spent a lifetime championing the democratic process, founded The Dreyfuss Civics Initiative. The non-profit is “a nation-wide enterprise to encourage, revive, elevate and enhance the teaching of civics in American schools.”

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