Richard Dreyfuss didn’t realise he was short until his friends told him.
The ‘Jaws’ actor – who is 5’5 tall – wasn’t very happy when he found out that he was considered as a short actor during a costume fitting for his 1968 movie ‘The Young Runaways’ and had to check with his best friends Albert Brooks and Rob Reiner.
Speaking on ‘This Morning’, Richard, 71, said: "I was told that I had to be fitted for a suit and so I put myself in the hands of the costumer and he did a half hour on short actors and I turned to him at a certain point and went, ‘Excuse me, are you telling me that I’m short?’ And he went [nodded] and I said, ‘You’re nuts.’ I went to the mirror and I looked in the mirror and I didn’t know what this fellow was talking about and I went to my best friends to tell them the story of this crazy costumer. I went to my best friends Albert Brooks and Rob Reiner for the first time in my whole career I went, ‘Did you know that I’m short?’ And I realised for the first time that I was short."
The ‘American Graffiti’ star went on to explain that although he "resented" his new diminutive status he decided to "embrace" being considered a short performer.
He said: "I was, like, p***ed and mortally offended and I actually resented it. I thought, ‘How has no one told me this?’ And they said, ‘Well Richard most of us have always known that you were short, come on…’ And I said, ‘Well not to me you didn’t.’ And so I then at 19 became a short person, I embraced it and I embraced it because I had no alternative."
Richard Dreyfuss didn’t realise he was a short actor
