'Jaws' star Richard Dreyfuss says the Oscars' new diversity rules 'make me vomit' and complained that actors can't be in blackface anymore

• Richard Dreyfuss told PBS that the Academy's new diversity and inclusion standards "make [him] vomit."
• The Oscar-winner said actors shouldn't have to "risk hurting people's feelings."

'Jaws' star Richard Dreyfuss says the Oscars' new diversity rules "make me vomit" and complained that actors can't be in blackface anymore.

The 75-year-old Oscar-winning actor criticized the Academy's new inclusion standards — which will be implemented for the first time in 2024 — in an interview with PBS' "Firing Line With Margaret Hoover."

The Academy Awards will require films competing for Best Picture to either feature diverse performers or stories on-screen, have underrepresented groups working as crew or as creative or marketing leads for the movie, or give industry access through apprenticeships to diverse candidates.

"No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is," Dreyfuss said. "And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people's feelings? You can't legislate that. And you have to let life be life."

Dreyfuss then went on a tangent about blackface — the practice of white actors donning makeup to be cast as Black characters — and described how he thought Laurence Olivier, a white actor, played Othello "brilliantly" in 1965.

"Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?" Dreyfuss told PBS, adding, "Are we crazy? This is so patronizing. It's so thoughtless and treating people like children."