Steven Spielberg promised cinemagoers they might “never go in the water again” after seeing his 1975 thriller Jaws.
But the director has now revealed that he’s additionally afraid to take a dip — as a result of he believes sharks are “mad at him” for the searching frenzy that broke out within the wake of the movie.
The triple-Oscar winner, who made his title with the 1975 fish horror a couple of bloodthirsty Great White terrorising a US resort, was interviewed for Monday’s BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs.
“That’s one of the things I still fear,” he mentioned.
“Not to get eaten by a shark but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sports fishermen that happened after 1975.
“I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that.”
Jaws was based mostly on a 1974 e-book of the identical title written by Peter Benchley, who went on to turn into a shark conservationist.
After the movie’s success, trying to find sharks grew to become a preferred sport, with competitions to catch the largest or heaviest creature changing into common occasions alongside the Atlantic coast of America.
