DON’T GO IN THE WATER

‘Jaws’ Child Actor Reveals How Movie Left Him Traumatized

The actor who played Sean Brody was spooked by the film’s animatronic shark.

Steven Spielberg’s classic movie Jaws terrified a whole generation of moviegoers—including, apparently, one of the actors in the movie itself. Jay Mello, who played the lovable child Sean Brody in the 1975 film, told People magazine that he “didn’t go back into the water for like two years after the movie was made.” He went on to say that he wasn’t even able to watch the whole movie after its release, as his parents ducked his head under the seats of the movie theater during scary sequences. Mello’s character was the son of Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), police chief of the fictional shark-infested beach town of Amity Island. Sean Brody became a favorite of Jaws fanatics, in part because of his endearing habit of imitating other characters. However, his character, was ultimately killed off in a shark attack in 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge. Mello has since stayed largely out of show business, instead working at a maple syrup company in Vermont.