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Burt Reynolds: athlete, movie star and all-around manly man
Oozing charm and manly charisma, Burt Reynolds knocked around in TV bit parts for almost a decade until in 1962, he landed the role of Quint Asper on the CBS Western Gunsmoke. Reynolds played a mixed-race blacksmith who becomes deputy to Marshal Matt Dillon ( James Arness). He left in 1965, taking his gruff good looks to the movies. Indeed, despite some critically acclaimed roles, Reynolds is best remembered as the hirsute, good ol’ boy action star of the 1970s Smokey and the Bandit movies.
He was a Southerner by choice, not by birth.
He was born
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. in Lansing, Michigan, and raised in Riviera Beach, Florida. For years, he claimed to have been born in Waycross, Georgia, but in his 2015 memoir, he admitted he made it up to deny his northern roots.
“I ... didn’t want to be a Yankee.”
He went to Florida State on a football scholarship.
“I may not be the best actor in the world, but I’m the best Burt Reynolds in the world.”
Known as Buddy (to distinguish him from his father), Reynolds was a star player at Palm Beach High School and much sought after by college teams, eventually joining the FSU Seminoles as a running back. But knee troubles and a car crash finally forced him to quit the sport. He remained an FSU booster for the rest of his life.
He was part Cherokee.
Reynolds’ tribal heritage was often a factor that landed him roles in the early days of his career. He used to joke that the only Indigenous character he never was asked to play was Pocahontas.
About that nude Cosmo spread...
Around the time of his breakthrough film role—as
Lewis Medlock in Deliverance—he broke an unspoken cultural barrier by posing nude for Cosmopolitan.
He rued it later, believing it hurt his standing as an actor.
He regretted the one that got away.
Though twice divorced (from Judy Carne and Loni Anderson), his romances were mostly long-term, especially with Dinah Shore and Sally Field. He called Field “the love of my life” and wished he’d married her.