Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss encountered a spirit that helped him turn his back on drugs early in his career.

Dreyfuss admits he still quakes when he thinks about the eerie spectre that helped him quit cocaine.

The actor says, "I had a car crash in the late 1970s, when I was really screwed up, and I started seeing these ghostly visions of a little girl every night.

"I couldn't shake this image. Every day it became clearer and I didn't know who the hell she was. I had no kids, I was a bachelor.

"Then I realised that kid was either the child I didn't kill the night I smashed up my car, or it was the daughter that I didn't have yet. I immediately sobered up. 

"I still don't get it, but, hey, it did the trick."