‘Smokey and the Bandit’ and ‘Deliverance’ star dead at 82 //
Burt Reynolds, the macho, mustachioed “Smokey and the Bandit” star, has died. He was 82.
The Oscar-nominated movie star died Thursday morning in Florida, his manager Erik Krtizer told The Hollywood Reporter.
Reynolds was best known as an action star, often preferring to do his own stunts, but balanced his resume with romantic, comedic and dramatic parts, too, earning his lone Oscar nomination in
1998 for “Boogie Nights.”
The actor played porn director Jack Horner in the Paul Thomas Anderson film, though he later famously claimed to “hate” Anderson, and said he never watched “Boogie Nights” all the way through.
Still, Reynolds had plenty other roles in which he could revel — the Michigan native was the top-grossing movie star in Hollywood for each year from 1978 to 1982.
In that span, he released films “Starting Over,” “The Cannonball Run,” “Rough Cut,” and a sequel to “Smokey and the Bandit.”
It was the original “Smokey” in 1977 that Reynolds is best known for — a Hal Needham action comedy flick that featured Reynolds as Bo “Bandit” Darville, a man hired to transport 400 cases of beer from Texas to Atlanta in his black Pontiac Trans-Am.
The film was a massive success, and earned $126 million at the box office, which today would equate to $508 million.
The actor was born on Feb. 11, 1936, in Lansing, Mich.