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Richard Dreyfuss, who played Vice-President Dick Cheney in the recent George Bush biopic W, is at the centre of a real-life drama after deciding to sue his father and uncle over a personal loan he claims was not repaid.
The Oscar-winning actor has filed a lawsuit seeking US$4 million ($6.8 million) in repayments, interest fees and damages related to an US$870,000 advance he gave his relatives in 1984 to help with a 13-storey office building they own in downtown Los Angeles.
Dreyfuss accuses his uncle, Gilbert, and father, Norman, of acting with "fraud" and "malice" in refusing to turn over accounting records for the building that would show whether he should have had income from the investment.
The suit claims the brothers diverted US$6 million from a lawsuit they won against the State of California over a lease arrangement for the building and that they failed to repay a US$13 million loan against the property, causing a lender to start foreclosure proceedings.
Though Dreyfuss, 60, has in recent years stepped back from the limelight, he retains a status akin to royalty in Hollywood, and his decision to sue two close relatives, will be devoured by the showbusiness media. Originally from a tight-knit Jewish family in Brooklyn, Dreyfuss is thought to have become estranged from his father, a former restaurateur and lawyer, after the death of his mother Geraldine from a stroke in 2000. His lawsuit was originally filed last August.
The actor's private life has endured plenty of turbulence over the years. Having starred in some of the biggest blockbusters of the 1970s, including Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he became the youngest man to win a best-actor Oscar in 1978, at the age of 30, for his role in The Goodbye Girl.
But he became addicted to cocaine, and was arrested for possession of the drug in 1982 after driving his car into a tree, and forced to take a break to spend a period in rehab.
Dreyfuss' father and uncle have denied in court documents that the loan was as old as the actor claims.
- INDEPENDENT
