Photo:Oliver Rosser; Everett Collection
Oliver Rosser; Everett Collection
Actor Ian Shaw takes on a major role in a new Broadway production — his own father.
Ian, 53, is the son of the lateJawsactor Robert Shaw, who played the shark hunter Quint inSteven Spielberg’s iconic 1975 blockbuster. More than four decades afterJawsfirst scared moviegoers out of the water, Ian takes to the Broadway stage, starring in a play he also cowrote as his own father.The Shark Is Brokenpeels back the curtain on howJawsactors Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and the elder Shaw may have passed the time aboardJaws’s iconic shipTheOrca.
“I’d spent my whole life trying to avoid association with my dad. He was a very successful film star, but I wanted to be an actor in my own rights,” Ian tells PEOPLE of his decision to create the play, which he cowrote with Joseph Nixon. “And I thought, as you do as children of these successful people, it’s in poor taste if you cash in on their success — you want to do your own thing.”
Robert died in 1978 at age 51, before Ian was 10 years old. The actor and writer says grieving his father is “behind me” and notes that he “felt like it was quite a release taking a fresh perspective on this, having the bravery to play him.”
“Although it was with a lot of help [from] my friends and family, I still felt it was an enormous risk and that it would carry potential backlash of possible shame on my family because I didn’t want to put [him] on a pedestal,” Ian says. “But equally, I didn’t want to throw him under a bus either. So the tone made me feel very nervous.”
Courtesy Ian Shaw
Ian has been performing as his father inThe Shark Is Brokensince the production premiered in Scotland at the2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The actor was only five years old whenJawswas filmed; he recalls being “more interested in building sandcastles than hanging around on the set.”
“I do remember meeting Steven Spielberg actually, and he was nice. I remember thinking that he was too young to be telling my dad what to do,” Ian recalls.
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“It’s about love, I think. And you feel it in the audience,” Ian tells PEOPLE of the play’s themes. “I feel like when I’m talking about my father — when I’m playing my father talking about his father and his yearning, his loss… he wanted to comfort his father, but he wasn’t able to. And it’s moving.”
Coincidentally,The Shark Is Broken’s Broadway run at New York City’s John Golden Theatre also connects Ian with his mother,Mary Ure, who performed on the same stage in the playLook Back in Angerin 1957.
“She made her Broadway debut inLook Back in Anger, and I’m making mine with this,” Ian says. “And so yeah, I mean, I feel incredibly privileged to be in that position. I’m a very lucky person to be able to say that.”
The Shark Is Brokenis playing now at the John Golden Theatre. More information about the production can be found on the play’sofficial website.
source: people.com
