Early Years
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was born in Lansing, Michigan on February 11, 1936. Reynolds had a nomadic childhood due to the fact that his father was in the US Army. This caused his family to move throughout the United States frequently. In 1946, the Reynolds family settled in Riviera Beach, Florida. It was here that Burt’s father would eventually become the chief of police.
Young Reynolds was a tremendous athlete, with football being his dominant sport. While he was attending Palm Beach High School, young Burt was named First Team All-State, as well as All-Southern as a fullback. He also had received multiple scholarship offers to play collegiate football.
“When I had dreams, I dreamed about scoring touchdowns—or coaching. I never dreamed about Academy Awards or things like that.”
– Burt Reynolds
Upon graduating high school, Reynolds played halfback for the Florida State Seminoles. However, he was forced to leave the university for two years. This was due to a knee injury during the first game of his sophomore year, as well as a bad car accident where he lost his spleen. When Reynolds returned, he rejoined the football team. However, after being primarily responsible for the team’s loss to North Carolina State on October 12, 1957, he quit the team, and football, in the locker room immediately after the game.
Acting Beginnings
During Reynolds’s rehabilitation and prior to returning to Florida State, he attended Palm Beach Junior College. It was here that he became interested in acting. It was an interest that began in the English class of Watson B. Duncan III, a man Reynolds would come to consider his mentor.
In 1956, Duncan cast Reynolds as the lead in a play he was producing, Outward Bound. Reynolds would go on to win the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance. The award included a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse in New York. After leaving Florida State for the second time, the young actor headed up to New York to make use of the scholarship he had won. It was here that he met Joanne Woodward, who helped him find an agent.
“I don’t think I ever actually saw him perform. I knew him as this cute, shy, attractive boy. He had the kind of lovely personality that made you want to do something for him.”
– Joanne Woodward
Broadway Burt
In 1957, soon after getting an agent, Reynolds appeared off-Broadway in the play Tea and Sympathy. Soon after, he headed to the Great White Way to perform in Look, We’ve Come Through, Reynolds Broadway debut. He continued with the latter as the production went on a national tour.
Upon returning to New York, Reynolds attended acting classes. His first real training in his craft was at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse located on East 54th Street in New York City. Other students in his class included Red Buttons, Jan Murray, Carol Lawrence, and Frank Gifford.
During this Broadway period, Reynolds had encounters with some of the most iconic Hollywood actresses of all time. The first was a platonic friendship with Marilyn Monroe. They would frequently walk with each other from 58th Street to the Actors Studio and would talk about a variety of topics. On one such occasion, he asked her why she wasn’t swarmed with fans every time they walked together. Reynolds later recalled:
“How come they don’t jump up and down when they see you? She said, ‘Oh—do you wanna see ‘her’?’ Monroe then threw her shoulder back and began to strut provocatively. Within 20 feet, she was surrounded by about 40 people. I liked her so much…she was so real and sweet and kind.”
The other legend Reynolds happened to meet during those years had intentions for him that were in no way plutonic. Reynolds had attended a party and noticed a beautiful woman in a canary yellow blouse. She noticed him back. They talked for a while in a flirtatious way and not long after she asked him to take her home. They shared a cab and eventually pulled up to her apartment building at 450 East 52nd Street. Clueless that the woman expected him to come inside with her. Reynolds later said:
“…Sorry, you didn’t tell me your name?” She replied, “My name is Greta Garbo.’ and I said my name is Bud. What an idiot I am”
Years later, a now-famous Reynolds would tell this story at various parties he attended. Word reached Garbo about him telling others about this non-event and she sent him a one-sentence note in the mail, which read:
“You were an idiot”
Reynolds’s next notable Broadway role was opposite Charlton Heston in Mister Roberts, directed by John Forsythe. After the play closed, Reynolds found work on the docks of Manhattan. However, Forsythe pulled some strings to get him an audition for a role in the movie Sayonara (1957) starring Marlon Brando. However, due to Reynolds having a similar “look” to Brando he did not get the role.
Early Television Years
Although his Sayonara test was unsuccessful, the film’s director, Joshua Logan got the young actor a screen test with Lew Wasserman at MCA. The talent scout noticed the secretaries in his office swooning over Reynolds and quickly signed him regardless of how the screen test turned out.
“I don’t care whether he can act or not, anyone who has this effect on women deserves a break.”
– Lew Wasserman
Not long after signing a seven-year contract with MCA, Burt Reynolds was soon appearing regularly on television. He began his Hollywood career with notable guest appearances on popular television series of the day, such as Flight, M Squad, Schlitz Playhouse, The Lawless Years, and Pony Express.
It wasn’t long until Reynolds was cast as the co-lead in Riverboat, opposite Darren McGavin. Although the show ran from 1959-61 and produced 77 episodes in total, Reynolds quit during the first season because he hated McGavin. Quitting Riverboat was not a wise decision for the actor and his career suffered for it.
“I couldn’t get a job. I didn’t have a very good reputation. You just don’t walk out on a network television series.”
– Burt Reynolds
For the next two years, Burt Reynolds got work on TV wherever he could. During this time, he typically played heavies on westerns as well as on crime shows. This included Shayne, Johnny Ringo, and The Brothers Brannagan.
“I learned more about my craft in these guest shots than I did standing around and looking virile on Riverboat.”
– Burt Reynolds
Back to Broadway, Movies and More TV
In 1961, Reynolds returned to Broadway to reprise his role in a new production of Look, We’ve Come Through, which was an instant flop. The show closed after just five performances. This would mark Reynolds’s final foray into the world of New York theatre. That year Reynolds made his big-screen debut in the low-budget movie Angel Baby, co-starring George Hamilton. He made a second movie that year, the war drama Armored Command.
Back in Hollywood, Reynolds continued to work steadily in guest spots on television shows. This included The Twilight Zone, Ripcord, and Perry Mason. In 1962, he was given a second chance with a recurring leading role on Gunsmoke. This was when Dennis Weaver left the show. Reynolds beat out 300 other actors for the role of half-breed blacksmith Quint Asper. He stayed on the series for three seasons, leaving in 1965.
“(The Gunsmoke years were) the happiest period of my life. I hated to leave that show but I felt I had served my apprenticeship and there wasn’t room for two leading men.”
– Burt Reynolds
Throughout his stint on Gunsmoke, Reynolds was married to fellow thespian Judy Carne. The marriage ended around the time he left the series.
Being Typecast
In 1966, Reynolds continued to play Native American characters on both the small and big screens. On television, he was cast as John Hawk in the detective series Hawk, which was canceled after a mere 17 episodes. In theatres, he appeared in the Spaghetti Western, Navajo Joe (1966), which was shot in Spain, and co-starred legendary French Connection actor Fernando Rey.
Reynolds was cast by producer Dino De Laurentiis in part because he resembled Marlon Brando, who was the first choice for the role, and not at all interested in the part. Other factors that helped Reynolds secure the role included a recommendation to De Laurentiis from Burt’s friend Clint Eastwood, as well as Reynold’s willingness to do his own stunts.
“(Navajo Joe was) so awful it was only shown in prisons and airplanes because nobody could leave. I killed ten thousand guys, wore a Japanese slingshot and a fright wig.”
– Burt Reynolds
Reynolds rounded out the 1960s with many less than memorable roles. Amongst these releases were two pictures released in 1969: Shark! and the Western 100 Rifles featuring Jim Brown and Raquel Welch.
Saying No
Reynolds was offered the role of Captain Augustus Bedford “Duke” Forrest in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970). The actor turned down the role because he didn’t want to be in a movie with:
“…Barbra Streisand’s husband and that tall, skinny guy who was in The Dirty Dozen…”
Reynolds was even offered the role of James Bond after the late Sean Connery departed for the second time in 1971. Once again, the actor turned down the iconic role because he, wisely, didn’t believe that an American actor should play that part.
Around this time Reynolds appeared in the series Dan August, as the titular character, a police detective. The series was on opposite ratings monster Hawaii Five-0. As a result, the show was canceled after one season. Reynolds returned to the theatre in a production of The Tender Trap at Arlington Park Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
Talk Shows and Dinah
After the play wrapped he headed back to Los Angeles where he began to be a frequent guest on a variety of talk shows including The Merv Griffin Show, where he made jokes about himself in a self-deprecating manner. These appearances became so popular Reynolds was given the opportunity to guest host The Tonight Show while Johnny Carson was away.
“I realized that people liked me, that I was enough. So if I could transfer that character—the irreverent, self-deprecating side of me, my favorite side of me—onto the screen, I could have a big career.”
– Burt Reynolds
During this time, Burt Reynolds also had begun a romantic relationship with talk show host and singer Dinah Shore, who was twenty years older than him. The relationship had lasted four years, ending in 1975.
“I had never met her (Dinah Shore) before but out of the blue I asked her to come to Palm Springs for the weekend. She said no, but I knew it was the beginning of the most special relationship of my life. I’d never met anyone like her. I realized there was a big age gap between us but it didn’t make the slightest difference. I was already in love with her. Being with Dinah opened every Hollywood door. I got to know Sinatra, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Groucho Marx, Peggy Lee, Orson Welles. Everyone knew Dinah and they all loved her.”
– Burt Reynolds
Deliverance and Success
When Point Blank (1967) director John Boorman was casting his adaptation of the novel Deliverance (1972), he immediately turned to Reynolds for the role of Lewis Medlock because of his appearances on The Merv Griffin Show. Boorman’s first choice for the role was Marlon Brando but he wasn’t available due to scheduling conflicts with The Godfather (1972). Fortunately for Reynolds, this would be the movie that broke the comparisons between him and Brando for good.
Deliverance was shot on location in Georgia, in Raburn County, as well as on the Chattooga River. The production gained notoriety in that it was not insured in an effort to cut costs. As a result of this, nearly all of the stunts were performed by the actors themselves.
For the scene where Lewis goes over a waterfall, they decided to use a dummy in place of Reynolds as it was deemed to be too dangerous. After seeing the footage the actor had requested to re-shoot the scene with him doing the stunt because he felt the dummy looked fake and wanted it to look as good as possible.
When they shot the scene again, Reynolds fell out of the canoe, his head and shoulder hitting the rocks under the surface of the water, cracking his tailbone, and knocking him unconscious. Upon waking up he asked Boorman “How did it look?” to which Boorman replied:
“It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall”
Deliverance would go on to earn three Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The film was also a box office smash, earning 46 million dollars, making it the fifth highest-grossing movie of 1972.
“The night of the Academy Awards, I counted a half-dozen Burt Reynolds jokes. I had become a household name, the most talked-about star at the award show.”
– Burt Reynolds
Reynolds starred in a series of hit movies following his successful turn in Deliverance including White Lightning (1973), Gator (1976 – his directorial debut), and The Longest Yard (1974). He was also in a pair of flops directed by Peter Bogdanovich: At Long Last Love (1975) with Cybil Shepard and Nickelodeon (1976) with Ryan O’Neal. Burt also appeared in cameos in Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie (1976) and Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*(*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972).
The Bandit
In 1977, Burt would star in the biggest hit of his career, but it almost didn’t happen. The movie was Smokey and the Bandit and initially, he wasn’t interested in starring in it. However, after talking to director Hal Needham, Reynolds expressed a willingness to star in the film, under the right conditions.
First, Reynolds wanted Jackie Gleason to play the racist sheriff character and allow him to improvise his lines because the script was terrible. Reynolds was adamant about this point because Gleason had attended many parties at Dinah Shore’s home and had improvised several characters at these parties, including one that fit this movie perfectly. Reynolds would also name the character Gleason played, Buford T. Justice, who was a real racist cop young Burt knew from his father’s days on the Riviera Beach police force.
Reynolds also fought to get Sally Field cast as his love interest after the studio thought she was too ugly for the role. Reynolds and Fields were an item at the time. The pair were together for four years and made three other movies together besides Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper (1978), The End (1978), and Smokey and the Bandit II (1980).
Smokey and the Bandit would end up being the second highest-grossing movie of 1977, behind only the mega-hit Star Wars. Smokey and the Bandit grossed $126 million on a minuscule $4 million budget. It also would cement Reynolds’ stranglehold as the most bankable movie star of the late 1970s.
Career Decline
Burt Reynolds began the 1980s on a hot streak with multiple hits that included The Cannonball Run (1981) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). The latter took the actor back to his Broadway roots. However, his career and life were about to take a turn for the worse.
Reynolds was offered and turned down the role of astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (1983) to play the titular character in race car comedy Stroker Ace (1983). The Breedlove role went to Jack Nicholson, who would go on to win an Oscar, while Stroker Ace was a box office flop. Reynolds also would go on to marry his Stroker Ace co-star Loni Anderson in 1988, four years after the movie’s release. The marriage would end in ruins in 1994 after he was caught having an affair with a cocktail waitress.
After making Cannonball Run II (1984), Reynolds signed on to co-star in City Heat (1984) with his good friend Clint Eastwood. While filming, Reynolds was hit in the jaw with a real chair instead of a prop chair. The result was that his jawbone was severely broken. Unable to eat solid foods as the injury healed, this caused the actor to experience a drastic weight loss.
Since this occurred at the height of the AIDS crisis, rumors swirled for many years that Reynolds was infected with the fatal disease. Desperate to squash the AIDS rumors, the actor made a series of movies that were ready to shoot, regardless of the quality. These included Heat (1986), Malone (1987), Switching Channels (1988), and Rent a Cop, released in 1987.
“When I was doing very well, I wasn’t conscious I was doing very well, but I became very conscious when I wasn’t doing very well. The atmosphere changed.”
– Burt Reynolds
Return to TV
Although Burt Reynolds began to produce the hit game show Win, Lose, or Draw with its debut in 1987, the actor wouldn’t actually return in front of the television cameras until two years later in 1989, where he starred in the detective series B.L. Stryker for the ABC network. The series lasted only two seasons.
In 1990, Reynolds would have his first true hit with the launch of the CBS show Evening Shade, a comedy series where he played a former Pittsburgh Steelers football player who is now coaching a high school football team. The show ran for four years, producing 98 episodes. It also earned Reynolds an Emmy Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy.
Boogie Nights
After co-starring with Demi Moore in Striptease (1996), Reynolds landed the iconic role of Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed movie about the adult entertainment industry, Boogie Nights (1997). Reynolds had turned down the role seven times before finally relenting and accepting the part.
“It just wasn’t my kind of film.”
– Burt Reynolds
Once filming began on Boogie Nights, Reynolds found himself in frequent conflict with Anderson. Things soon boiled over between the pair when Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg’s characters get into an onscreen fight.
“I think that when Burt and I kind of got into it, it may have been the day before or the day after, but it was a really tense three days on the set of Boogie Nights. The other 57 days were really fun and a lot of laughs, but there were three tense days there in the middle where Mark was fighting with Burt, or in the film…It was the middle of summer, it was really hot, and we were all stuck together in that house for a long time, and things were just — they were heated.”
– Paul Thomas Anderson
Regardless of why the tension existed between the pair, it was enough for Reynolds to disavow the movie, going as far as to fire his agent. Anderson asked Reynolds to return for his next picture Magnolia (1999), but the actor refused, even vocally stating he hated both Boogie Nights and Anderson. Incredibly, Reynolds publicly badmouthed both while doing press for the movie.
During an interview with Conan O’Brien Reynolds said of Anderson:
“I didn’t want to hit him in the face — I just wanted to hit him”
Also, in an interview with GQ, Reynolds spoke further about why he disliked Paul Thomas Anderson. The actor stated:
“I think mostly because he (Anderson) was young and full of himself. Every shot we did, it was like the first time (that shot had ever been done). I remember the first shot we did in ‘Boogie Nights,’ where I drive the car to Grauman’s Theater. After he said, ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ And I named five pictures that had that same kind of shot”
Although Reynolds would go on to win the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, it is widely believed that his constant badmouthing of the project inevitably cost him the Academy Award in the same category. This was the only Oscar nomination Reynolds would earn in his entire career.
Final Years
Reynolds continued to act through the next two decades, most notably in the movie version of The Dukes of Hazard as well as the remake of The Longest Yard, both released in 2005. In 2018, Reynolds signed on to play George Spahn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However, the famed actor died on September 6, 2018, of a heart attack, before filming commenced. Burt Reynolds was 82 years old.
Reynolds was cremated and his ashes were given to his niece. He was interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on February 11, 2021, on what would have been his 85th birthday. Several months later, in September 2021, a bronze bust of Burt Reynolds was placed at Hollywood Forever Cemetery as a tribute to the actor.
[…] player who would soon go on to win a seven-year contract with Universal Studios when a talent agent saw his effect on the secretaries. As the night went on, Garbo followed Reynolds through the party, asked him to fix her a cocktail, […]