If we’ve learned anything in the last few weeks, it’s that being an Oscar winner with a legendary career does not guarantee that you’ll be financially set for life. First up, Francis Ford Coppola. In late October we learned that Coppola was auctioning off his watch collection and various real estate assets after going completely broke from spending $100+ million of his own money financing the ill-fated “Megalopolis.”
Then Kevin Spacey told an interviewer that his finances were so bad that he was effectively homeless and accepting any job he could, including singing cabaret at a resort in Cyprus.
And now apparently it’s Richard Dreyfuss’s turn. Actually, Richard first made the claim that he was broke nearly a decade ago. How could the Oscar-winning star of classics such as “Jaws,” “The Goodbye Girl,” Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” and “What About Bob?” have no money? It seemed almost impossible to believe. Until now. Journalist Ben Dreyfuss, Richard’s estranged son, just confirmed it in a painful Substack essay about his family drama…
Ben and Richard Dreyfuss in 2013 (via Getty Images)
“I’m Broke”
Richard’s first public admission about his finances came back in February 2016 during a long, unusually candid interview with the Daily Mail during a promotion of the 25th-anniversary re-release of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” In that conversation, Dreyfuss did something almost no A-list actor ever does: he openly said he was “broke” and taking any acting job he could get for money.
When pressed on that somewhat shocking claim, Richard expounded:
“The Truth is hard to say or hear, but I’ve had an amazing amount of bad luck financially, and I realized I didn’t have the money I had… [When] I use the phrase ‘I’m broke,’ it means I’m broke. It means I don’t have the money I had. I wanted to retire and take my wife on cruises. I can’t afford that. I want to be able to go to Europe when I want. I can’t.”
In a follow-up answer, Richard expanded:
“I was never good with money. I spent too much and didn’t think about the consequences. I was being a young spoiled movie star. When I finally met the business manager I have now, he said, ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you to take a portion of each salary and put it aside in a special account you can’t touch?’ and I said, ‘No.’ Too bad for me. I didn’t think about it.”
Family Drama
Nearly a decade after that interview, Richard’s financial admissions suddenly took on new weight thanks to a series of explosive posts made by his eldest son, journalist Ben Dreyfuss. On November 13, 2025, Ben published a string of candid reflections on Twitter and followed them with a longer Substack essay detailing the breakdown of his relationship with his father. The posts were stunning not only because of the family estrangement, but because they confirmed—flat out—that Richard’s money problems were real.
“Everyone assumes my siblings and I are wealthy from our dad,” Ben wrote. “We’re all a bit too uncomfortable to make it clear, but we have no money from my dad. My dad has no money.”
According to Ben, the family dynamic began to unravel in 2017 when his younger brother Harry accused actor Kevin Spacey of groping him at age 18. Ben says he was managing his father’s Twitter account at the time and posted a supportive message on Harry’s behalf. That tweet, he claims, prompted someone to make their own allegation against Richard, which Dreyfuss has always denied. The fallout created years of tension.
By 2022, a family dinner in San Francisco erupted into a shouting match involving accusations, resentment, and long-simmering frustrations. Ben admits he lashed out, calling his father a homophobic slur—something he says he immediately regretted and has tried to apologize for repeatedly.
In January 2024, he sent Richard a long email trying to mend things. Ben published that message as part of his 2025 Substack post. In it, he expressed confusion and sadness over their estrangement, acknowledged his mistakes, and asked his father to reconcile. Richard never responded. Instead, Ben shared what he says was the last email he ever received from his father—a blistering, all-caps message in which Richard accused Ben and his sister Emily of lying to him, publicly embarrassing him, and believing he was hiding money from them.
Ben, for his part, insisted the estrangement isn’t about inheritance or money at all. He wrote that he always understood his father was no longer wealthy. But as the emails show, money was undeniably a pressure point—one that hovered over the family’s conflict even if it wasn’t the root cause.
Where Did the Money Go?
The earliest cracks appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Dreyfuss became one of the highest-paid actors of his generation at the exact same time his lifestyle spun out of control. He has openly admitted that he spent too aggressively, saved nothing, and ignored basic financial planning. That period overlapped with his cocaine addiction, which he has spoken about repeatedly in interviews. In 1982, he was arrested after crashing his car into a tree, an incident that led to rehab and a temporary career stall. Addictions are expensive. Career interruptions are expensive. Both together can vaporize millions.
Then came the career slowdown. After a series of major hits, Dreyfuss stepped back from leading-man roles in the 1990s and 2000s. Acting income for most performers is highly uneven, even in the best of times, and Dreyfuss has been blunt about the shift: older actors simply aren’t offered the kinds of roles or salaries they once commanded. By his own account, the paychecks shrank dramatically.
The biggest financial blow, however, came from a decision Dreyfuss made later in life. In the late 2000s, he effectively retired from acting to pursue The Dreyfuss Civics Initiative, a project he envisioned as his new full-time purpose. He spent four years studying in Oxford, lectured around the country, and threw himself into education and advocacy work. What he didn’t do during that time was act. And acting was the only income stream that had ever supported his lifestyle. When he eventually returned to Hollywood, he discovered fewer opportunities, lower pay, and a completely different industry than the one he had left behind.
Real Estate
Richard MIGHT still have some illiquid wealth in the form of real estate. That doesn’t exactly help pay for groceries, but it’s worth noting. Here’s what I was able to piece together about Richard’s real estate history:
In 1995, Richard sold a Los Angeles home to Kevin Costner for $2.7 million. In 2005, the year he divorced Janelle Lacey (Ben’s mother), Richard sold a home in Sherman Oaks, California, for $1.9 million. He had listed it a year earlier for $2.4 million. In May 2006, Richard and his new wife, Svetlana, paid $1.02 million for a home in Carlsbad, California. They sold this home in July 2008 for $820,000. In April 2008, Richard paid $1.0 million for a home in Encinitas, California. Today, this property, which sits on 1.2 acres, is worth around $2 million. He appears to still own this home today.
