American journalist and actor Benjamin Dreyfuss, eldest son of award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, was born with Peters’ anomaly, a rare genetic eye disorder which, despite many operations, left him blind in his left eye.
Writing in his blog Calm Down, Dreyfuss says he was born with one blue eye and one grey eye. “One is hiding under a partially opened eyelid; the other is extending far beyond it, like a potato exploding out of an egg cup.” His left eye returned to normal size eventually, fitting underneath the lid, though it remained a cloudy grey with no vision. Dreyfuss recalls starting to wear contact lenses at a very young age to look ‘normal’. At the age of five he started to wear a prosthesis, which he still wears today, more than two decades later.
Richard Dreyfuss and first wife, actress Jeramie Rain, have continued to raise money for ophthalmology centres throughout the US to support medical research for children with eye disease.
