Robert Shaw: An Actor's Life On the Set of JAWS and Beyond
By Christopher Shaw Myers
290 pp Citadel Press
Review by Joseph Pipolo for The Montauk Sun. August 1, 2025.
Near the end of the book, a few members of Robert Shaw’s family watch the filming of JAWS. At this point in the shooting, Quint, played by Robert, is being devoured by “Bruce,” the mechanical shark. (Bruce was the shark’s nickname) The family looked on in horror and sadness. It was gruesome. His sister, Joanna, could only think about the “demons eating away at her brother from the inside” (233). This very powerful and revealing book is as much about Robert Shaw’s extraordinary life as it is about his tender and intense relationship with his sister Joanna. They were best friends.
And this book is about demons. Palpable and insidious demons. Throughout the nearly 300 pages, Shaw is characterized as wildly “alive.” Competitive and driven. He was brutally honest and expected the same from others. This book is about what drives a person and what drives a person off a cliff. Robert Shaw was complex. He was intense. At times, he was obsessed with power with an almost pathological need to prove his superiority. Whether it was ping pong or playwriting or performing, Shaw was fierce. There is no doubt that Shaw was convinced of his seemingly limitless ability.
All of this said, this book paints a very complicated human being. He did have humility. He did self-reflect and self-criticize. He did laugh at himself and he was often self-deprecating. The author takes us through all of the fabric that knit itself into the novelist, playwright, actor, son, husband, father, brother and friend. This book carries the reader on Robert Shaw’s very tumultuous trip right into Bruce’s inevitable jaws. He died only three years after the incredible and unlikely success of JAWS. He was the central reason for the film’s success. And according to Christopher Shaw Myers, JAWS plays a very significant part in the extraordinary man’s far too early death.
Any reader looking for a traditional biography, this is not it. The author classifies this as narrative non-fiction. It is a collection of stories he, son of Joanna Shaw and nephew to Robert, has been collecting since he was five years old. There are the extraordinary details of Robert graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and his numerous roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The book will look at his many accomplishments, including Tony and Academy nominations. He was prolific. He wrote five novels and three plays.
This book gives us what Quint’s Indianapolis speech delivers in JAWS. The author takes a tirelessly driven, at times seemingly irrational artist and gives him clear, poignant, historical and physiological context. Quint was surrounded by sharks. So too was Shaw— inside and out. Quint was driven by demons, Robert Shaw survived his father’s suicide, poverty, and growing up in WWII England. Quint was a warrior who was in competition with all men and ultimately the 25 foot shark. Robert Shaw too was a warrior. He too was in the deep dark waters of both the internal and external predators of his life. That is what this book is. No person who reads Chris Shaw Myers’ narrative will ever, ever see or hear Quint’s speech the same way again. No wonder Robert Shaw insisted, unflinchingly, on rewriting the now famously insightful film defining speech. If you know the film, then you know the relationship between Quint, Hooper and Brody is transformed in that cabin. You also know that the relationship between the film and viewer is transformed as well. Things suddenly make sense. Terrible and tragic sense. That is what this book does with Robert Shaw. It is illuminating and clarifying. Both men lived through wars in their own hellish way. Both were still fighting until the end.
Shaw’s father’s favorite saying was better to drown than be a duffer. A duffer is a dull, inactive, and non-risk-taking person. Shaw clearly lived this out—he was no duffer. As far as Quint goes, after explaining his treacherous survival and thus giving palpable context to his hatred of sharks, Quint ends by saying that is why he will never again put on a life jacket. He lived to tell of a past he will never forget. This is the same as Shaw. William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” Anyone who is alive knows this.
Robert Shaw’s life’s work is evidence of the terrible and wonderful, the tragic and hopeful, the inspiring and dispiriting reality in which he lived. Richard Dreyfuss said Robert Shaw was one of the most impressive humans he ever encountered. This book unfolds all of the multitudes inside Shaw’s far too short, but large life.