Politically, Richard Dreyfuss describes himself as "intensely pre-partisan, and even more intensely anti-shmuck."

The 66-year-old Oscar winner almost immediately injected politics into an hourlong conversation with actress Ileana Douglas about his life and career Friday as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival. Dreyfuss was even more outspoken in a later interview with The Associated Press, calling for a "civil strike" in support of the U.S. Constitution to encourage civic participation.

"I'm going to send you a copy of the preamble to the Constitution," he said. "If there's anything in it that you don't agree with, don't sign it; just send me back an explanation. You will agree with everything, because it's beautifully crafted and it's meant for all. And if I get 500,000 signatures, I'm going to call for a civil strike.

"What I would do is pick a weekday, and according to the time zone, 12:30 in the East, 9:30 in the West, you don't go, you don't do, you don't call, you don't buy. You don't do NOTHING for 30 minutes. That's not enough to hurt the economy, but it's enough to get their attention."

As you've probably guessed, Dreyfuss is even more passionate about politics than he is about acting these days. He still takes roles — including one in a current TV pilot he won't discuss — but he doesn't feel the same fire as before.

"I had this urgency to act," he said of his early career. "And then after 50 years, I realized that it had mellowed into a friendship and I didn't have to do it. ... I love acting. I love it. I just don't have to do it."

There's no part he's yearning to play, though he likes the idea of performing Shakespeare on radio.

What Dreyfuss does have to do, as a descendent of generations of activists, is express his frustration with the elected and the electorate and try to do something about it. ("From the outside," he said, "it looks like America is taking acid.") The actor took a hiatus from Hollywood to study at Oxford and establish his nonprofit Dreyfuss Initiative in 2003 to promote civics education in American schools.

"We're absolutely hypnotized into a state of denial or into the state of, 'I have no power to do anything. I'm powerless.' And that, in fact, is incorrect," he said. "The power lies in the people. No kidding, it really does ...

"When people aren't taught they have sovereign power ... if they're not taught it, they don't got it. And they're not taught it."

During his earlier film festival appearance at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Dreyfuss cited the first U.S. president: "Washington said that the Constitution should always be central and the parties should always be peripheral," Dreyfuss said, "and we have it turned around now."

He also shared memories of working with Steven Spielberg on "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." He talked about working with Audrey Hepburn, doing the voiceover for "Stand By Me" and Neil Simon's "perfect script" for 1977's "The Goodbye Girl," for which Dreyfuss won the lead actor Oscar.

He also talked about the magic of movies.

"No art form has ever swept the world like this one," he said. "Movies have captured your dream state... They are reaching into your dream state and pulling you out and showing you that you're alive."

Though he joked in an interview that he continues acting because "it's the only way I know how to make a living," Dreyfuss admitted he's deeply grateful for the opportunity to touch others with his performances.

"Acting is giving a blessing and getting a blessing. You can feel it all over, and when you make people laugh, you do what Shakespeare says: You give surcease from sorrow," he said. "And when you do a drama and you're in the zone, you are telling them: This is life as you know it..."

"It's an extraordinary thing I got to do my entire life," he continued, "which means I was blessed."

 

e:9.5pt?(-iHk?xV?ize:11.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#333333;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'> are on video-on-demand, a still relatively recent phenomenon where, with the click of the remote, you can immediately decide for yourself about the latest sensation from one of cinema's most interesting and infuriating directors. (The superb, mysterious French film "Stranger by the Lake" also uses explicit sex for an eerily placid murder thriller set at a lakeside cruising spot for gay men.)

 

But for a theatrical experience, the best thing going right now might be Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel," a movie that has, in a slowly expanding release, become Anderson's highest-grossing worldwide. With an Oscar-worthy performance by Ralph Fiennes as a fastidious concierge, it's been called Anderson's most superficial movie (for its candied set design) and his deepest (for its melancholy nostalgia of a more refined, pre-World War II era). It's both.

Any Errol Morris documentary is an event, and that's no different for his latest, "The Unknown Known," in which he spars helplessly with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But the movie isn't about Morris' failure to get Rumsfeld to open up; it's about Rumsfeld's smug refusal to re-examine the past. It's one of the most ironic films you'll ever see.

How about animated films? There's the hugely charming, hand-drawn, Oscar-nominated "Ernest and Celestine," produced by the maker of "The Triplets of Belleville" and also released in an English version with voices by Forest Whitaker, Paul Giamatti and others. It's a delightful picture book of a movie. The final movie from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, "The Wind Rises," is also not to be missed.

And there's more still: Steve Coogan's surprisingly good big-screen version of his long-running comic creation "Alan Partridge"; the serene gentleness of the switch-at-birth Japanese film "Like Father, Like Son"; and "Veronica Mars," innovatively released, snappiness intact.

With such rich offerings, the movies are off to a very good start in 2014.