1980s macho star devoted to family and friends
BURT Reynolds’ good looks and charm made him one of Hollywood’s most popular actors.
The star of such films as Deliverance, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit in the 1970s and ’80s died on September 6, at age 82.
Reynolds, who was set to appear next summer in the allstar cast of director Quentin Tarantino’s next film, died at a hospital near his South Florida home, according to his manager, Erik Kritzer.
‘‘It is with a broken heart that I said goodbye to my uncle today,’’ Reynolds’ niece Nancy Lee Hess said in a statement issued through Kritzer.
While acknowledging that Reynolds had a history of health issues — he underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in 2010 — Hess called her uncle’s death ‘‘totally unexpected’’.
‘‘My uncle was not just a movie icon; he was a generous, passionate and sensitive man, who was dedicated to his family, friends, fans and acting students,’’ Hess said.
At the peak of his career, Reynolds was one of the most bankable actors in the film industry, reeling off a series of boxoffice smashes until a career downturn in the mid1980s.
He rebounded in 1997 with an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as a porn director in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights — a role Reynolds despised — and won an Emmy for his role in the 19901994 television series Evening Shade.
With his trademark moustache, rugged looks and macho aura, Reynolds was a leading male sex symbol of the 1970s. He famously appeared naked — reclining on a bearskin rug with his arm strategically positioned for the sake of modesty — in a centrefold in the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan in 1972.
Reynolds’ personal life sometimes overshadowed his movies, including marriages that ended in divorce to actresses Loni Anderson and Judy Carne and romances with Sally Field and Dinah Shore, among others.
His financial woes and his struggles with prescription pain medication also generated attention.
Reynolds cited director John Boorman’s Oscarnominated 1972 Deliverance as his best film and said he regretted that the hoopla from his Cosmopolitan appearance detracted from the movie that made him a star. He played tough guy Lewis Medlock — opposite Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox — in the chilling tale of a canoe trip gone bad in rural Georgia.
His credits encompassed lead roles in dozens of films, including White Lightning (1973), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), Hustle (1975),
Nickelodeon (1976) and SemiTough (1977).
He was the top moneymaking star at the box office in an annual poll of movie exhibitors from 1978 through 1982.
Many of Reynolds’ films were set in the South. He often played a lovable rascal who outwits local authorities, as in director Hal Needham’s 1977 crowdpleasing action comedy Smokey and the Bandit, costarring his thengirlfriend Sally Field and Jackie Gleason, and its two sequels.
Another of his memorable performances was that of a former pro quarterback who lands in prison and assembles a team of convicts to play the warden’s squad of brutal prison guards in 1974’s rollicking The Longest Yard, directed by Robert Aldrich. He appeared in a supporting role in 2005’s remake with Adam Sandler.
Reynolds also directed several movies in which he starred, including Gator (1976), The End (1978), Sharky’s Machine (1981) and Stick (1985).
While some of his performances were critically praised, others were ridiculed, particularly in the bloated action comedy Cannonball Run II, a sequel to his financial success The Cannonball Run (1981). He also starred in the notorious 1975 musical flop At Long Last Love, a film so atrocious that director Peter Bogdanovich publicly apologised for making it.
Reynolds turned down some notable roles, including Han Solo in Star Wars, which went to Harrison Ford; the title role in a James Bond film; and the astronaut in Terms of Endearment that Jack Nicholson turned into an Oscarwinning performance.
Reynolds said in 2012 that he regretted some of his film choices. ‘‘I took the part that was the most fun — ‘Oh, this will be fun.’ I didn’t take the part that would be the most challenging,’’ he told Piers Morgan.
Asked to come up with his own epitaph, Reynolds replied: ‘‘He lived a hell of a life, and did his best — his very best — not to hurt anybody.’’
Burton Leon Reynolds jun was born on February 11, 1936, and grew up in Florida. He played football at Florida State University in the 1950s, before his professional football hopes were dashed by injuries suffered in a car crash.
He began acting after enrolling in a junior college. He moved to New York and landed minor stage and TV roles before making his film debut in 1961. Reynolds often was cast in Westerns, including the popular
Gunsmoke TV series in the 1960s.
In 1972, the same year
Deliverance was released, he showed versatility by also starring in Woody Allen’s comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask.
Reynolds starred in romantic comedies as well, including
Starting Over (1979) with Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen, and in the musical comedy The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
(1982) with Dolly Parton.
His film career stalled in the mid1980s with several misfires and he was never again a leading movie star.
Reynolds turned to television and had a successful run on the situation comedy Evening Shade,
costarring Marilu Henner and Charles Durning.
The actor was due to appear with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Al Pacino in Tarantino’s upcoming period drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set in 1969 Los Angeles around the time of the Charles Manson murders. — Reuters