SAD ABOUT SALLY
THE VETERAN ACTOR OPENS UP ABOUT THE MOVIE ROLES AND RELATIONSHIPS THAT GOT AWAY
Burt Reynolds on his lost love
There are a few things Burt Reynolds regrets in his life. They include turning down some great roles, such as the male lead in Die Hard and Pretty Woman, the part of Han Solo in Star Wars and the chance to play James Bond.
“In my infinite wisdom, I told them an American couldn’t play Bond and they needed a British actor,” admits Burt (82).
“They turned back to Sean Connery and I spent the rest of my life kicking myself.”
Similarly, he wishes he hadn’t become addicted to painkillers or posed naked for Cosmopolitan magazine, and if only he’d been better at handling money – his film career made him millions but Burt declared bankruptcy in 1996. And marrying actress Loni Anderson (73) was “a dumb move”, he concedes now.
However, the one thing he is truly sorry about is that he didn’t make his relationship with Oscar winner Sally Field work. The pair were Hollywood’s golden couple from 1977 until 1982 when Sally left her Smokey and the Bandit co-star, saying he was too controlling.
“She was the love of my life
and I screwed the relationship up,” says Burt, who is single.
“That sense of loss never goes away.”
But there could still be hope. “I spoke to her son recently and he said that his mum talks about me all the time. Maybe she will phone me one day. I’d love to have that conversation.”
Burt has been reflecting on both his personal and his career highs and lows lately, as he promotes his latest film The Last Movie Star. Specifically written for Burt by independent film-maker Adam Rifkin, it’s about a faded screen idol who has made bad choices in his life.
Burt admits he can identify with his character Vic Edwards and what he goes through.
“I really didn’t know how personal it was until I started making it,” he says.
“There were moments where I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is me.’ I got very emotional at times.”
At one stage, Burt was Hollywood’s biggest movie star. A jobbing actor since the late 1950s, his breakthrough role was in the 1972 thriller Deliverance.
He then had a run of hits including The Longest Yard, but it was the hugely popular Smokey and the Bandit that made him a megastar in 1977. Unfortunately, its success led to a stampede of producers trying to cast Burt in roles similar to the devil-may-care bootlegging truck driver he played, and he ended up being typecast purely as a fun-loving action hero when he was actually a talented actor capable of emotional depth.
Things started going downhill with The Cannonball Run and then Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and by the late 1980s, most films Burt made tanked at the box office. To complicate matters, he was dealing with a painkiller addiction, developed after his jaw was shattered during the filming of City Heat in 1984.
Then, it emerged that his marriage to blonde bombshell Loni wasn’t the fairytale romance it seemed. When they went their separate ways in the early 1990s, the fallout was acrimonious. After being declared bankrupt and losing his home in the mid-1990s, Burt resorted to auctioning off personal items. The turnaround in his fortunes was not easy to cope with, he admits now.
“In tough times, you have to keep going and I’m proud of the fact that I just kept going. I’m a fighter. You can never afford to think you’ve made it, otherwise you go into quicksand.”
It looked like things were on the up in 1997 when he was cast in Boogie Nights. However, Burt says he hates the film and regrets making it even though it won him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
Failing to capitalise on the success of Boogie Nights, Burt’s career floundered again. Age then caught up with him, and as well as undergoing a quintuple
heart bypass surgery and spending time in rehab to kick his painkiller habit, he’s also had numerous surgeries on injuries suffered when he did his own stunts in early movies.
These days, he uses a cane to get around. “I tell people it’s to look debonair but I actually need it. I’m not sure if I can swagger any more, but I can limp with the best of them.”
Until The Last Movie Star, good roles had been tough to come by, partly because people wrongly assumed
Burt had retired. But now he’s had more job offers, and has recently been filming Quentin Tarantino’s thriller Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.
“I still haven’t done the best work I can do,” he says. “I hope I get the chance.”