Hollywood hunk Reynolds ‘more than an icon’
Washington – Burt Reynolds, whose good looks made him one of Hollywood’s most popular actors as he starred in such films as Deliverance and Smokey and the Bandit in the ’70s and ’80s, died on Thursday at age 82.
Reynolds, pictured, who was set to appear next summer in the all-star cast of director Quentin Tarantino’s next film, died in the morning at a hospital near his South Florida home, according to his manager, Erik Kritzer.
A caretaker for Reynolds at his estate north of Palm Beach, was heard telling an emergency dispatcher that the actor was having chest pains and breathing difficulties in an audiotape of the call released by police.
The actor was later pronounced dead at the Jupiter Medical Centre.
“It is with a broken heart that I said goodbye to my uncle today,” Reynolds’ niece Nancy Lee Hess said in a statement.
While acknowledging Reynolds’ history of health issues – he underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery in 2010 – Hess called his death “totally unexpected”. “My uncle was not just a movie icon; he was a generous, passionate and sensitive man,” 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 box-office smashes until a
career downturn in the mid-’80s.
He rebounded in 1997 and won an Emmy for his role in the 1990-1994 television series Evening Shade.
He famously appeared naked – reclining on a bearskin rug with his arm strategically positioned – 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 a romance with Sally Field, among others. His financial woes and struggles with prescription pain medication also generated attention. – Reuters