Athor Talk: Christopher Shaw Myers on Jaws Actor Robert Shaw (For adults and teens)

Register HERE or call the Library at 860-767-1560.

It’s Shark Week! In celebration, the Essex library will host an author talk with Christopher Shaw Myers. Christopher is the nephew of actor Robert Shaw, the shark-obsessed fisherman Sam Quint in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster, Jaws. Christopher will share insights and entertaining tidbits from his book, Robert Shaw: An Actor’s Life on the Set of Jaws and Beyond. For adults and teens. A screening of Jaws will follow the book talk promptly at 3:30 p.m.

This program is free and open to the public at 33 West Avenue, Essex, CT.

Christopher Shaw Myers
Chris Myers attended Trinity College, where he double majored in English Literature and Mathematics, and Columbia University, where he received a Master of Business Administration. After a thirty-year career in the hi-tech field, working with companies across the U.S. and Europe, Chris delved deeper into his family’s history to explore the magic that the Shaws cultivated in their lives.

ROBERT SHAW: An Actor’s Life On The Set Of JAWS And Beyond is not your traditional biography. Written in narrative style, it tells the story of actor and writer Robert Shaw—best known as Quint in Jaws—from the perspective of the women who shaped his life.

At its heart are his indomitable mother, who raised five children by herself after her husband committed suicide, and his sister Joanna, a pioneering Cambridge scholar, anti-Apartheid activist, mother of seven, and champion for women’s workplace rights. Their intertwined lives unfold across vivid settings: the Orkney Islands, wartime Cornwall, Apartheid-era South Africa, Broadway and London’s West End, and finally Martha’s Vineyard, where Shaw worked on Jaws and co-wrote the iconic USS Indianapolis monologue.

More than a portrait of a brilliant but polarizing actor, this is a sweeping family saga of strength, survival, and most of all, creativity—an intimate story of perseverance behind one of cinema’s most unforgettable figures.

Jaws
When a massive killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Long Island, it’s up to the local police chief, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down. Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfus, Jaws (1975) is rated PG and has a 2h4m runtime.