Actor Richard Dreyfuss Attends Cruz Event in Iowa: ‘I’m Interested in What He Has to Say’

Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss was far from the safe-thought confines of liberal Hollywood on Saturday, when he joined conservatives at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz in Ames, Iowa.

Most of the Jaws actor’s peers have divided their support between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, but Dreyfuss was open to hearing from candidates whose answers are not centered on more government.

According to The Dallas Morning News, the veteran actor, now 68, observed a Cruz rally from a front-row seat and later displayed a genuine curiosity about the Texan and his supporters. “It’s the politics of my country, so I’m interested,” he said, surrounded by consefvatives.

When asked if his presence equated to support, the actor said, “It suggests that I’m interested in what he has to say.”

“We come at it from different places,” Dreyfuss said of Cruz, “But he reveres the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. When you seek to be the president of a country that has 300 million people, you can’t get everyone on the same platform. You can’t. But if you can make it clear that the most important things are shared, then fine.”

Dreyfuss went on to say he was simply seeing if someone was making an attempt at reviving “the old Republican Party,”

“We need the old Republican Party. I’ve got no problem with saying that,” the actor concluded.

Dreyfuss, who won an Academy Award in 1978 for his leading role in The Goodbye Girl, previously called for the impeachment of former President George W. Bush, and also supported last year’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

The actor has also sided with the National Rifle Association in regards to calls for more gun control and is an ardent supporter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. “I want people to re-sign the preamble [of the Constitution of the United States]” Dreyfuss told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “As a matter of fact, I’d like everyone in the country to re-sign the preamble, just as a reaffirmation of who we are, because every people has a right to know who they are and why they are who they are.”