Richard Dreyfuss' son opens up about ongoing family rift

Richard Dreyfuss' son Ben has revealed why he and his siblings are "estranged" from their Oscar-winning dad.

The 39-year-old son of Dreyfuss and ex-wife Jeramie Rain opened up about his family's "complicated" relationship via social media, claiming that he and his siblings, Emily and Harry Dreyfuss, have been "estranged" from the Jaws star for several years.

"You've possibly already seen this in the papers, but I don't talk to my dad anymore," he wrote via Substack.

"It's easy to write that like it's nothing, but it's been sitting in my head like a monster for years. The simplest way to own this is to show you the last email exchange I had with him - the last one he actually responded to. I've sent plenty since, but he hasn't replied."

The email appeared to have been from Ben to Richard following a tense family dinner in San Francisco in 2022.

After apologising for "screaming at each other", Ben received a mostly all-caps response from his father: "AT LEAST KEEP THIS ONE LETTER. IT'LL BE THE LAST ONE UNLESS YOU STOP BEING A COWARD. OR START BEING BETTER THAN YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER," the Goodbye Girl actor wrote.

Ben explained more about the estrangement in a 13 November tweet that has since been deleted.

"My dad has no money," he wrote, as reported by USA Today. "If he did, we wouldn't get it since we've been estranged ever since some complicated family drama to do with MeToo."

He claimed that the drama stemmed from his younger brother's sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey, which Spacey denied.

Ben shared a post in support of Harry from their father's Twitter account, which he believes led an unnamed woman to come forward with her own allegations against the American Graffiti star.

"That tweet prompted someone to MeToo my dad. He blames us for that," Ben wrote in his since-deleted tweet. "This led to years of acrimony."