My father, Norman, was a corporate attorney. He had come from a violent gang culture in Brooklyn and had pulled himself up by his bootstraps. His whole life before I existed was one of utter violence.
My mother, Gerry, had been married to my dad since before the war. He spent two years recovering from wounds from a mortar that had all but taken him out after the Battle of the Bulge. My mother once told me that, after he had been discharged from hospital, he had gone to a bank, taken his prewar personality, put it into a vault, locked it, thrown away the key and never looked back. He became totally money-oriented.
Despite his violent past, he never beat me, my brother, Lorin, or my sister, Cathy. I’m the middle child and the second son. So I was neither the first-born nor the longed-for daughter. Classic middle-child syndrome. My third wife, Svetlana, who hadn’t met me before my mum died in 2000, insists I was my mother’s favourite. I don’t know how she knows this and I don’t think it’s true. I guess she’s picked up clues from what I’ve told her.
My mum was highly political – and funny, too. I once asked why she was a socialist and not a communist. “Better doughnuts,” she said. I’d hang out with her. Aged about 11, I told her I was the luckiest kid in the world because I was white, Jewish and American. She looked at me: “You know, you’re old enough to sit in with the adults now.”
My father worked all the hours and was very distant when he was at home. If I wanted to spend time with him, I had to figure out a topic that had to do with sex, the one subject on which he would open up. If I’d say: “I don’t know how to get it on with girls,” he would make it his business to teach me. But I now realise my mother was teaching me way more about women than he ever did.
During my parents’ 34-year marriage, he would say he wanted to go away and find himself. Not once did he talk about his war experiences. My first memories are of his crutches and canes in the hall closet. One day, I was thoughtless enough to say: “Why don’t we ever play ball?” He said: “I’m your dad, not your pal.” Even into his 90s, the army provided him with two pairs of special shoes each year; otherwise he couldn’t have walked any distance.
On the night of my 21st birthday, my father announced he was leaving the family. At that point, we admired him as this eccentric, strong personality. He intended selling the plastics company he had acquired. Each of us kids was going to get $250,000; my mother was getting $500,000. We were all in shock. I remember feeling conflicted: half-admiring of him, half-loathing.
A couple of months later, my mother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Then came the recession of 1968 and the stock of the company that was buying him out fell from 53 to three. That all but broke him. He was now more or less worthless and that meant in his eyes that he was less of a man.
In the end, he remarried, twice, three times. My mum remained on her own. He died aged 94, three or four years ago. By then, we weren’t speaking. I had never forgiven him for how he behaved although I’d tried to put it to one side.
I’m a better father to my own children – I have a daughter and two sons – than my father ever was to me. I’m very demonstrative, very loving. I have no problem in wanting them to better me, something my father wrestled with. But then I have no problem whatever in worshipping my children.
• A Close Encounter with Richard Dreyfuss, in conversation with Mike Read, is at Leicester Square theatre, 24 September, leicestersquaretheatre.com
