Steven Spielberg may have been directing a shark attack on screen, but behind the scenes, it was his body that felt under siege.
In a powerful new interview for Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, airing next month on National Geographic, the 78-year-old filmmaker has revealed that the gruelling production of the film left him so traumatised he thought he was “having a heart attack”.
“When the film wrapped in Martha’s Vineyard, I had a full-blown panic attack,” Spielberg admits. “I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t get a full breath of air.”
The pressure of directing a major studio picture with a ballooning budget, a malfunctioning mechanical shark, and rising tension between the cast pushed him to the brink. “I kept going to the bathroom and splashing water on my face. I was shaking. I was out of it completely out of it.”
He’d go on to change cinema with Jaws, which was the first true summer blockbuster, which earned over $475 million at the box office and won three Academy Awards, but Spielberg, then only 27, says the price was steep.
“I had consistent nightmares about directing Jaws for years afterwards,” he said. “I was still on the movie and the film was never-ending.”
At the time, the term PTSD wasn’t widely understood, especially not in the context of film directing. But Spielberg says he showed all the signs.
“The success was fantastic but it didn’t stop the nightmares, it didn’t stop me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, where the sheets would be soaking wet.”
Also, he was so certain the ordeal would earn him a Best Director nomination at the Oscars, he’d practically cleared space on the mantel.
But as the legendary filmmaker reflects he may have celebrated a little too soon. "When a film is on the cusp of being considered for awards, it's not so much what you want for yourself, it's what everyone else says is going to happen for you," says Spielberg, 78. "So I just understood, 'I guess I'm getting nominated.'"
"When I wasn't, I was surprised. And I was disappointed," he admits. "Because I was believing the noise, and you have to not believe that stuff."
Looking back now, Spielberg admits that while Jaws changed the course of his life, it also nearly broke him: “I had nothing to cry about the film was a phenomenon. And I’m sitting there shedding tears because I couldn’t divest myself of the experience.”
Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story premieres July 11 at 8pm on National Geographic and streams the same day on Disney+.
