Hit Movies That Stars Thought Would Fail

Richard Dreyfuss was fortunate enough to star in several undeniably classic films fairly early in his career, due in no small part to getting onto the radars of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg early in their own Hollywood journeys. "American Graffiti" would be Dreyfuss's first big role, and he added both "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to his resume before the end of the '70s. With "Jaws," Dreyfuss got to be part of the movie that is said to have invented the very concept of the summer blockbuster, and everyone involved knew it was something special. Everyone, it seems, except Dreyfuss.

In a career retrospective he did for Yahoo, Dreyfuss said of the vibe on the "Jaws" set, "Everyone had thought they had struck gold, and I said, 'What are you talking about? It's just a little movie.'" Clearly, he couldn't have been more wrong, as "Jaws" was so big that it set new standards for what it meant for a movie to be big. To his credit, Dreyfuss didn't try to retroactively pretend like he never doubted the movie once it was a hit. He said that while doing press to promote "Jaws" after its release, he was open about the fact that he had low expectations for the aquatic thriller, and had been way off the mark about its potential.