Director of “Jaws” Steven Spielberg confessed to filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau during an interview for the 1975 film’s 50th anniversary documentary this year, that he had a nervous breakdown after wrapping the shark movie.

Speaking to Reuters recently, Bouzereau said the “Schindler’s List”, “E.T.” and “Saving Private Ryan” director, then 27 years old when filming at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts in 1974, found the production took such a heavy toll on his mental health that he had a "panic attack" at the end of filming and often “cried” years later in private on a replica boat of the film’s Orca at Universal Studios.

Spielberg also admitted during the National Geographic and Disney+ documentary entitled “Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story” that this helped in his recovery too.

“I said to myself, the one aspect that I don't think has been touched upon is the human story of a man who is so young and has had a really strong and powerful beginning of his career and now is faced with the biggest challenge ever. Is he going to quit? Is he going to get fired? Is he going to survive?” said Bouzereau who has worked with Spielberg on a number of behind-the-scenes documentaries about the Oscar-winning director's films, including "The Making of 'Jaws'" in 1995.

“I started tearing up because he put me in his shoes, you know, of the sort of macro story of cinema being changed. And suddenly it was about a micro story. It was about this boat and this man who nearly, you know, didn't make it through this movie,” he said.

Bouzereau believes the reason the infamous shark tale has lasted 50 years on since its release on June 20, 1975, is because Spielberg is a “humanist” and understands people.

“You see that in 'Jaws'. The great moments of the film have nothing to do with the shark … They have to do with the kitchen table between Chief Brody and his son, or between the three guys (Brody, Quint and Hooper on the Orca boat), you know, comparing scars and stories of World War Two,” he said. “It's the humanity that transpires from it that makes the film timeless and frankly, relatable.”

“Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story” includes new interviews with Spielberg, as well as new, unseen footage from the director’s archives, and interviews with Hollywood filmmakers, including James Cameron, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, J.J. Abrams, Jordan Peele and Guillermo del Toro, and actors such as Emily Blunt.

It also has testimonials from “Jaws” author and screenwriter Peter Benchley’s family, shark experts and original cast and crew, of which most of the actors were locals from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the real-life location of fictitious Amity Island. It was also co-produced by Benchley’s wife, an ocean conservation and policy advocate.

Bouzereau said both Spielberg and the Benchleys were so “horrified" by the killing of sharks following the film’s initial release, that they became shark advocates, “changing the dialogue completely.”

“In the case of Steven's perspective, he was using the shark as a metaphor for our fear of the unknown, basically,” Bouzereau said.

“Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story” premieres on Friday (July 11) at 8 p.m. UK time (1900 GMT) on National Geographic and streams the same day on Disney+.