REYNOLDS WAS ONE OF A KIND
Hollywood icon’s long career was characterized by professional and personal highs and lows
Mustachioed movie star dead at 82
Burt Reynolds, the handsome film and television star known for his acclaimed performances in Deliverance and Boogie Nights, commercial hits such as Smokey and the Bandit and for an active off-screen love life which included relationships with Loni Anderson and Sally Field, has died at age 82.
His death was confirmed Thursday by his agent Todd Eisner, who did not immediately have further details.
The mustachioed, smirking Reynolds inspired a wide range of responses over his long, erratic career: critical acclaim and critical scorn, popular success and box office bombs.
Reynolds made scores of movies, ranging from lightweight fare such as the hits The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit to more serious films like The Longest Yard and The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.
He was nominated for an Oscar for Boogie Nights, the Paul Thomas Anderson film about the pornography industry, he won an Emmy for the TV series Evening Shade and was praised for his starring role in Deliverance.
But he also was a frequent nominee for the Razzie, the tongue-incheek award for Hollywood’s worst performance, and his personal life provided ongoing drama, particularly after an acrimonious divorce from Anderson in 1995. He had a troubled marriage to Judy Carne, a romance with Dinah Shore and a relationship with Field damaged by his acknowledged jealousy of her success.
Through it all he presented a genial persona, often the first to make fun of his own conflicted image.
“My career is not like a regular chart, mine looks like a heart attack,” he once said. “I’ve done over 100 films, and I’m the only actor who has been canned by all three networks. I epitomize longevity.”
Reynolds was candid about his flops, his regrets and about his many famous friends. He would call posing nude for Cosmopolitan one of his biggest mistakes because it undermined the respect he had gained for Deliverance.
“Burt Reynolds was one of my heroes,” tweeted Arnold Schwarzenegger. “He was a trailblazer. He showed the way to transition from being an athlete to being the highest paid actor, and he always inspired me. He also had a great sense of humour — check out his Tonight Show clips. My thoughts are with his family.”
Born in Lansing, Mich., and raised in Florida, he was an allSouthern Conference running back at Florida State University in the 1950s. Reynolds appeared headed to the NFL until a knee injury and an automobile accident ended his chances. He went to New York, where he worked as a dockhand, dance-hall bouncer, bodyguard and dish washer before returning to Florida in 1957 and enrolling in acting classes.
After moving to Hollywood, he found work as a stuntman, including one job that consisted of flying through a glass window. As a star, he often performed his own stunts, and played a stuntman in the 1978 film Hooper, one of his better reviewed films.
In the early 1970s, director John Boorman was impressed by how well Reynolds handled himself when subbing as host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Boorman thought he might be right for a film adaptation of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance.
Reynolds starred as Lewis Medlock, the intrepid leader of an illfated whitewater rafting trip. Deliverance was an Oscar nominee for best picture and no film made him prouder. In his 2015 memoir But Enough About Me, he wrote, “It proved I could act.”
But soon after filming was completed, he made a decision he never stopped regretting. While appearing on The Tonight Show with Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, he agreed to her invitation, offered during a commercial break, to be the first male centrefold for her magazine.
“It was a total fiasco,” he wrote. “I thought people would be able to separate the fun-loving side of me from the serious actor, but I was wrong.”
In 1988 he married Anderson. She starred in the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and they met on a talk show. The couple divorced in 1995, and their breakup was an embarrassing public spectacle. Reynolds eventually gave her a $2-million settlement and a vacation home to settle the divorce.
He rebounded with the role of Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which brought him some of his best reviews. He won a Golden Globe for best supporting actor and received an Oscar nomination. Convinced he would win, he was devastated when the Oscar went to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting.
“I once said that I’d rather have a Heisman Trophy than an Oscar,” he wrote in his memoir. “I lied.”