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Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss recently slammed the Academy Awards for setting new inclusivity mandates for future nominees.

The Academy Awards announced new standards for the 2024 Oscars, declaring that films must meet certain inclusivity requirements in order to be nominated for best picture, a move that Dreyfuss called “patronizing.”

He was asked his thoughts on these changes while appearing on PBS’s Firing Line. “They make me vomit,” he replied.

Films must meet at least two of these new requirements, some of which call for one lead role, or at least 30 percent of the cast, being from an underrepresented group, or for the film’s focus to be on “an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.”

“No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is,” Dreyfuss said.

“I’m sorry, i don’t think there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that,” he continued.

Dreyfuss went on to praise Laurence Olivier‘s 1965 performance as Othello, in which the actor performed the titular role in blackface.

“You know, Laurence Olivier was the last white actor to play Othello, and he did it in 1965, and he did it in black face. And he played a Black man brilliantly,” he said. “Am I being told that I will never have the chance to play a Black man?”

"They make me vomit," says @RichardDreyfuss of new cast and crew diversity standards for Best Picture #Oscar eligibility.

Plus he praises Laurence Olivier's 1965 performance of Othello in blackface.

"Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?" (1/2) pic.twitter.com/NcmpZoXe1c
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) May 5, 2023

He compared it to telling non-Jewish actors that they cannot play the Merchant of Venice. “Are we crazy?” he exclaimed.

Dreyfuss called the new requirements “so patronizing” and “thoughtless,” saying, “It says that we’re so fragile that we can’t have our feelings hurt.”

He won an Oscar for best actor in 1978 for The Goodbye Girl, becoming the youngest actor at the time to win the award. He was later nominated again in 1996 for Mr. Holland’s Opus.

Janet Yang, the president of the Academy Awards, stated that the new rules were not made to dictate what movies should be about from now on.

“It is almost a way for people to feel a bit more conscious about those things,” she told SkyNews earlier this year.

“It’s finding the right balance. So, we want rules that make sense, that keep people kind of on your toes about it, but not telling people what to make,” Yang said at the time.