Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
BURT’S BACK!
Playing a washed-up star trying to relive his glory days isn’t what you expect from legendary action man Burt Reynolds – but it’s earned him his best reviews in years
Hollywood legend Burt Reynolds on why his bittersweet new film about a washed-up movie star is his best in years
His hands may tremble these days and he relies on a fancy cane to prop up a battered body ravaged from a life of stunt work. But Burt Reynolds, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1970s and 80s, is enjoying a bit of a revival.
He’s been making movies for nearly 60 years, and in his Smokey And The Bandit heyday he was box-office gold dust. That film took $300m in the late 70s, equivalent to over a billion dollars today. Yet Burt says his latest film is the one of which he’s most proud. It’s also the most poignant, as he bares his soul to play fictional actor Vic Edwards in The Last Movie Star – which takes a wry look at the fading glory of a washed-up superstar whose life mirrors Burt’s almost perfectly.
The role was written for him by screenwriter Adam Rifkin, who has idolised him since he was ten. ‘Please tell Burt if he doesn’t want to be in this film, I’m not making it,’ he told Burt’s manager. Burt said he was flattered, loved the script Clinging to a rock as Lewis in 1972 film
Deliverance and signed up. ‘Adam wrote it for me. It’s a very personal film and I got very emotional at times,’ he says. ‘That was probably good for me as I haven’t done that in a long time.’
In the film, Vic Edwards – beefcake college football player turned stuntman and then hunky Hollywood leading man, just like Burt – is now a virtual recluse. But when he’s persuaded by his friend Sonny (Chevy Chase) to go to Nashville to accept a lifetime achievement award at a film festival, he sees it as a final chance to bask in his former glory. Rather than receiving VIP treatment, however, Vic is assigned a young Goth girl named Lil ( Modern Family’s Ariel Winter) as his personal assistant and put up in a rathole of a hotel, before being taken to a dive bar where the ceremony’s being held by a bunch of his nerdy fans. Disgusted by his treatment, he heads for his hometown of Knoxville to make peace with his past.
The film is laced with wry humour and poignant trips down memory lane as we see Burt, as Vic, watching and commenting on real clips from his signature films. ‘It’s a look at an entire life – about a guy who picked himself up off the floor and came back,’ says Burt. ‘It goes through all his hardship, but it’s been the most fulfilling thing. I’ve been so busy driving cars and motorbikes and shooting people that it’s unusual for me to be given such a
touching and uplifting script. I didn’t think it would be as well received as it has been so far, so I’m very proud of that. I’m also shocked because, as a result, I’m now doing three films in a row. I’ve never been so busy.’
Even at 82 he still brims with all the charisma of old. Earlier on in his career he was seen as a bit of a rascal with his cocky swagger, perfect comic timing and sheer physicality. The peak of his fame came in the late 70s and early 80s. Smokey And The Bandit – the 1977 film in which he played a beersmuggling trucker – turned him into a brand, with spin-off lunchboxes and action figures. In those days he lived with all the trappings of a superstar, an image he cultivated in 1972 when he sprawled naked on a rug for a Cosmopolitan centrefold, one hand strategically draped across his rippling thigh.
Naturally he’s enjoyed more than his fair share of women. His first marriage, to English actress Judy Carne, ended bitterly after three years in 1966. Sub- sequent lovers included singers Tammy Wynette and Dinah Shore, tennis ace Chris Evert, Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft and Sally Field, his Smokey And The Bandit co-star. Sally eventually left him because she felt he’d become too controlling, saying, ‘He gave me a feeling I was sexy, and I wanted to be everything he ever wanted. But I stopped existing. I dressed for him, looked for him, walked for him. He asked me to marry him many times, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it.’
Burt admits he’s never quite got over Sally. ‘We were together five years, but I messed it up,’ he says. ‘She’s the big love I lost. I still have a crush on her and I’d love her to call, but that’ll never happen. If I called her, she’d probably laugh, then hang up!’
One co-star, Kathleen Turner, from 1988 film Switching Channels, actively disliked Burt, describing him as ‘terrible to work with’. He says, ‘I don’t usually have that problem with women on set. I found her very pushy, everything was about her, not the movie. I didn’t get along with her.’
His second wife was actress Loni Anderson, who he wed in 1988. They adopted son Quinton that year and seemed to have a happy marriage until an embittered split in 1993. She later claimed that Burt had beaten her, and he in turn said she had cheated on him. He then began a relationship with cock- tail lounge manager Pam Seals but that ended in 2005 amid a volley of lawsuits, with Burt accusing her of trying to extort millions from him by threatening to expose his painkiller addiction and alleged physical abuse, and Pam countersuing him for palimony and violent behaviour. The pair settled out of court.
In terms of his career, Burt’s biggest regret is turning down the roles of James Bond and Star Wars’ Han Solo. He didn’t think an American could pull off Bond, and didn’t want the sci-fi role of Han because he felt more at home in down-to- earth action movies. ‘I regret it mostly for the money I’d have made, and now I think I could have done a good job,’ he says. ‘But I felt great doing my own stunts – going on a horse or falling out of a building.’ His favourite of his own films is Deliverance from 1972, about four city men who go canoeing in the wilderness with catastrophic consequences. ‘It was dangerous and people said we couldn’t do it, but we did. I was very proud of it, it won three Oscar nominations and made a lot of money. ‘Some of the scarier scenes were pretty rough, and included my hardest stunt ever, when I went over a waterfall and cracked my hip bone. I shot out over that waterfall like a torpedo. I was 35 and had been in great shape, but the crew looked down and saw this crippled man with his clothes ripped off, half-crawling. I’d never been so frightened. I did stunts for way too long. I’ve broken every bone in my body.’ In recent years, as well as going into rehab for addictions to pills and alcohol, and undergoing a quintuple heart bypass, he’s had surgery for stunt injuries to his back. ‘There’s not two hours go by when I’m not feeling pain from one of the accidents. It’s amazing that I can still walk. I have a cane now. I tell people it’s because I think it looks very debonair, but actually I need it.’
Burt keeps his memories alive with a treasured social circle. ‘I have some wonderful friends. Clint Eastwood is one. I don’t keep up with other actors too much. My favourite’s George Clooney. I haven’t really spent time with him but I’m sure we’d like each other because we have a similar outlook.’
There are some incidents he’d probably rather forget. In 1973 he was embroiled in a scandal on the set of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. Burt’s co-star Sarah Miles spent the night in his hotel room and returned to her own room the next morning to find her business manager, David Whiting, dead. It was ruled a suicide, but what really happened remains a mystery.
Burt’s career was unaffected, though, and at his peak he earned £8m a year. But his prof l igate lifestyle, divorce settlement and bad investments led to him filing for bankruptcy in 1996. He was forced to sell his Florida ranch where scenes for Smokey And The Bandit were filmed. ‘That broke my heart because of its memories – and the horses,’ he says, ‘I had around 100. They’re still around, though. I know where one is. I go by and whistle and he comes over. I think he understands I still love him.’
Did Burt feel he was living an extravagant lifestyle? ‘It wasn’t just extravagance, there were tough times. In tough times you have to keep going and I’m pretty proud of the fact I just kept going. I’m a fighter. You can never afford to think that you’ve made it, otherwise you go into the quicksand.
‘Now I teach a Friday night acting class in a school near my home and we have plenty of laughs. It keeps you level and connects you to the community. Everything isn’t about the movies.’
‘I’ve broken every bone, it’s amazing I can still walk’