Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated in 1995 for Mr. Holland\'s Opus. He has also won a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and was nominated in 2002 for Screen Actors Guild Awards in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries categories.\n', '

Dreyfuss was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Geraldine Dreyfus (née Robbins; 1921–2000), a peace activist, and Norman Dreyfus (1920–2013), an attorney and restaurateur, and was raised in the Bayside area of Queens, New York. His family is Jewish. He has commented that he "grew up thinking that Alfred Dreyfus and [he] are from the same family." His father disliked New York, and moved the family first to Europe[clarification needed], and later to Los Angeles, California, when Dreyfuss was nine. Dreyfuss attended Beverly Hills High School.\n', '

Dreyfuss began acting in his youth, at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Arts Center and Westside Jewish Community Center, under drama teacher Bill Miller. He debuted in the TV production In Mama\'s House, when he was fifteen. He attended San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge, for a year, and was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, working in alternate service for two years, as a clerk in a Los Angeles hospital. During this time, he acted in a few small TV roles on shows such as Peyton Place, Gidget, That Girl, Gunsmoke, Bewitched, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, and The Big Valley. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he also performed on stage on Broadway, Off-Broadway, repertory, and improvisational theater.\n', '

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