BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Full Name: Burton Leon Reynolds
Description: Actor. USA
Known For: Known for Film – “Smokey And The Bandit” – 1980
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 11th February 1936
Location Born: Waycross, Georgia, United States of America
CONTACT DETAILS
Web Site: Burt Reynolds at the Internet Movie Database
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Burt Reynolds
Burton Leon “Burt” Reynolds (born February 11, 1936) is an American actor and director who stars in many films, such as Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit, White Lightning with its sequel Gator, The Longest Yard with its 2005 remake and Boogie Nights in which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Reynolds’ parents were Burton Milo Reynolds (1906–2002) and Fern H. Reynolds (née Miller). Reynolds was born in Waycross, Georgia on February 11, 1936 but in his autobiography stated that his family was living in Lansing, Michigan when his father was drafted into the United States Army. Reynolds, his mother, and his sister joined his father at Fort Leonard Wood, where they lived for two years. When Reynolds’ father was sent to Europe where he landed at Normandy, participated in five campaigns and was commissioned a lieutenant. After the war the family returned to Lansing. In 1946, the Reynolds family moved to Riviera Beach, Florida. His father, Burt Sr., eventually became Chief of Police of Riviera Beach, which is adjacent to the north of West Palm Beach, Florida.
During 10th grade at Palm Beach High School, Reynolds was named First Team All State and All Southern as a fullback, and received multiple scholarship offers. After graduating from Palm Beach in West Palm Beach, Reynolds attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, and played halfback. While at Florida State, Reynolds became roommates with now notable college football broadcaster and analyst Lee Corso. Reynolds hoped to be named to All-American teams and to have a career in professional football. However, Reynolds was injured in the first game of the season; a car accident later that year worsened the injury. With his college football career over, Reynolds considered becoming a police officer, but his father suggested that he finish college and become a parole officer. In order to keep up with his studies, he began taking classes at Palm Beach Junior College (PBJC) in neighboring Lake Worth. In his first term at PBJC, Reynolds was in a class taught by Watson B. Duncan III. Duncan pushed Reynolds into trying out for a play he was producing, Outward Bound. He cast Reynolds in the lead role based on having heard Reynolds read Shakespeare in class. Reynolds won the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance in Outward Bound. Reynolds calls Duncan his mentor and the most influential person in his life. While at Florida State, Reynolds became a brother of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
The Florida State Drama Award included a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse, a summer stock theater, in Hyde Park, New York. Reynolds saw the opportunity as an agreeable alternative to more physically demanding summer jobs, but did not yet see acting as a career. While working at Hyde Park, Reynolds met Joanne Woodward, who helped Reynolds find an agent, and was cast in Tea and Sympathy at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. He received favorable reviews for his performance and went on tour with Tea and Sympathy, driving the bus as well as appearing on stage.
After the tour Reynolds returned to New York and enrolled in acting classes. His classmates included Frank Gifford, Carol Lawrence, Red Buttons and Jan Murray. After a botched improvisation in acting class, Reynolds briefly considered returning to Florida, but he soon got a part in a revival of Mister Roberts, in which Charlton Heston played the starring role. After the play closed, the director, John Forsythe, arranged a movie audition with Joshua Logan for Reynolds. The film was Sayonara; Reynolds was told that he could not be in the movie because he looked too much like Marlon Brando. Logan advised Reynolds to go to Hollywood, but Reynolds did not feel confident enough to do so.
Reynolds began working odd jobs while waiting for acting opportunities. He waited tables, washed dishes, drove a delivery truck and worked as a bouncer at the Roseland Ballroom. It was while working as a dockworker that Reynolds was offered $150 to jump through a glass window on a live television show. After his Broadway debut Look, We’ve Come Through, Reynolds first starred on television with Darren McGavin in the NBC series, Riverboat.
On June 11, 1959, Reynolds played Tony Sapio with Ruta Lee as Gloria Fallon in the episode entitled “The Payoff” of NBC’s 1920s crime drama, The Lawless Years. On November 11, 1959, Reynolds was cast with Whitney Blake and Howard McNear in the episode “The Good Samaritan” of the syndicated western series, Pony Express, starring Grant Sullivan, which aired in 1960 on the centennial of the primitive mail exchange service. In 1960s, he appeared in two episodes of the syndicated series The Blue Angels, about elite fliers of the United States Navy.
About this time, Reynolds guest-starred in the syndicated crime drama, The Brothers Brannagan in the episode “Bordertown”. He went on to appear in a number of other shows, including three segments of the Ron Hayes syndicated adventure series, The Everglades. He is remembered too for the role of Quint Asper, the half-Native American blacksmith and de facto deputy on CBS’s Gunsmoke from 1962 to 1965. In 1962, Reynolds secured a guest appearance on Perry Mason in “The Case of the Counterfeit Crank”. In 1963, he played a character named Rocky in The Twilight Zone episode 155 “The Bard” in which he amusingly lampooned his then-lookalike Marlon Brando. In 1965, he guest-starred as Technical Sergeant Chapman, a Flight Engineer in the second season episode 7, “Show Me A Hero” of ABC’s 12 O-Clock High.
After his film debut Angel Baby, Reynolds used his TV fame to secure leading roles in overseas low-budget films, the first was Operation CIA (1965), a spy film set in South Vietnam, but shot in Thailand. Reynolds was under strong consideration by producer Saul David for the lead in Our Man Flint but was rejected by the influential Lew Wasserman. Reynolds later starred in Saul David’s Skullduggery (1969).
After making a film in the then wildly popular spy film genre, Reynolds obtained the lead in a “Spaghetti Western”; Navajo Joe, came out in 1966. These low-budget starring roles established Reynolds as a bankable leading man in movies and earned him starring roles in American big-budget motion pictures. During this period, he starred in two short-lived cop shows: Hawk and Dan August. He disparaged these shows, telling Johnny Carson that Dan August had “two forms of expression: “mean and meaner.” His breakout performance in Deliverance in 1972 made him a star. The same year, Reynolds gained notoriety when he posed naked in the April (Vol. 172, No. 4) issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Reynolds claims the centerfold in Cosmopolitan hurt the chances for Deliverance and the film’s stars, including himself, from receiving Academy Awards.
Reynolds was offered the role of James Bond by Albert R. Broccoli, when Sean Connery left the franchise, but turned the role down, saying “An American can’t play James Bond. It just can’t be done.” Broccoli offered the role to another non-Briton, Australian George Lazenby.
He and Sam Fuller began filming ‘Shark! in 1967, though Fuller disowned the cut of the film.
In 1973, Reynolds released the album Ask Me What I Am. He would also sing with Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Reynolds appeared on ABC’s The American Sportsman hosted by outdoors journalist Grits Gresham, who took celebrities on hunting, fishing, and shooting trips around the world.
In 1977, director and producer George Lucas offered Reynolds the part of Han Solo in the first film of the Star Wars franchise. Reynolds declined – at which point Lucas offered the part to Nick Nolte, who also declined, so Lucas asked Harrison Ford. In 1977, Reynolds starred in the popular movie Smokey and the Bandit alongside Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason (as the sheriff) and Sally Field. Later that year, he worked as a guest color analyst on CBS Sports’ telecast of the Sun Bowl, teaming with Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier.
On March 15, 1978, Reynolds earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in the same year built a dinner theatre in Jupiter, Florida. His celebrity was such that he drew not only big-name stars to appear in productions but sell-out audiences as well. He sold the venue in the early 1990s, but a museum highlighting his career still operates nearby. In the 1980s, after the hugely successful Smokey and the Bandit and its sequels, he became typecast in similar, less well-done and less successful films.
While filming City Heat in 1984, Reynolds was injured and took several months off.
He tried his hand at producing two television shows with friend Bert Convy, including Win, Lose or Draw. He appeared as a celebrity gameplayer in the inaugural week of the show along with Justine Bateman, Debbie Reynolds and Loretta Swit. The set of the series was modeled after Reynolds’ living room.[citation needed] Another show Burt and Bert produced was titled 3rd Degree, and like on Win, Lose, or Draw, Burt appeared on a few episodes as a panelist from 1989 to 1990.
In 1987, Reynolds voiced Troy Garland – the father of a half-human, half-alien teen-aged girl – on the syndicated situation comedy Out of This World, a series that ran four seasons; and in 1989 he starred in a short-lived detective drama B.L. Stryker, one of the rotating elements of the ABC Mystery Movie.
During the first half of the 1990s, he was the star of the CBS television series Evening Shade, for which he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (1991).
Despite much success, Reynolds’ finances were bad, due in part to an extravagant lifestyle, a messy divorce from Loni Anderson (see below), and failed investments in some Florida restaurant chains; consequently, in 1996, Reynolds filed for bankruptcy. The filing was under Chapter 11, from which Reynolds emerged two years later.
In 1996, Reynolds sought a comeback in the movie Striptease with an over-the-top performance as a sex-obsessed congressman. The film was a box-office success, though generally panned by critics. According to Reynolds, his performance was inspired by politicians he met through his father, who had been a police chief. In 1997, he starred in the critically acclaimed Boogie Nights that he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance and won a Golden Globe Award, and co-authored the children’s book Barkley Unleashed A Pirate a “whimsical tale [that] illustrates the importance of perseverance, the wonders of friendship, and the power of imagination”.
In early 2000, he created and toured Burt Reynolds’ One-Man Show. In 2002, he lent his voice to the character Avery Carrington in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
In 2005, he played Nate Scarborough in a remake of The Longest Yard, with Adam Sandler who played the role of Paul Crewe, like him, before he received a Razzie Award nomination for “Worst Supporting Actor”. He also appeared in a film version of the popular 1980s TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, as Boss Hogg. He starred in the audio book version of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. In May 2006, Reynolds began appearing in Miller Lite beer commercials.
In July 2010, he guest-starred as an ex-CIA agent being hunted down by a team of Russian assassins who wanted to kidnap, interrogate, then kill him, on USA’s Burn Notice. Part of this role depicted absent-mindedness which was noted in the closing scene as “not only being when he drank” implying his character suffered from some form of memory disability or disease. In January 2012 Reynolds had a guest-starring role as himself in an episode of the animated FX TV show Archer. The episode titled “The Man from Jupiter” features Reynolds helping Archer (who idolizes him) take on a team of Cuban hitmen.
He also played himself in Saints Row: The Third as the mayor of Steelport and the head of a powerhouse L.A. real estate firm in the satirical thriller, Pocket Listing.
Personal life
At various points in his life, Reynolds has been romantically involved with Inger Stevens, Tammy Wynette, Lucie Arnaz, Adrienne Barbeau, Susan Clark, Sally Field, Lorna Luft, Tawny Little, Pam Seals, Dinah Shore and Chris Evert. His relationship with Shore garnered particular attention given the fact she was 20 years his senior. Reynolds married Judy Carne from 1963 to 1965, and Loni Anderson from 1988 to 1993, with whom he adopted a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds (born August 31, 1988). E! Online reported that he dated Kate Edelman Johnson from 2003 to 2005.
Atlanta nightclub
In the late 1970s Reynolds opened “Burt’s Place”, a restaurant/nightclub in the Omni International Hotel in the Hotel District of downtown Atlanta, Georgia.
Sports team owner
In 1982, Reynolds became a co-owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits, a professional American football team in the USFL whose nickname was inspired by his Smokey and the Bandit movies and Skoal Bandit which was a primary sponsor for the team which happened because they also sponsored Burt’s race team. Reynolds also co-owned a NASCAR Winston Cup team, Mach 1 Racing, with Hal Needham, which ran the #33 Skoal Bandit car, with driver Harry Gant.
Health
While filming City Heat, Reynolds was struck in the face with a metal chair, which broke his jaw and left him with temporo-mandibular joint dysfunction, or TMJ disorder. He lost 30 pounds as a result of having to restrict his eating and the analgesics he was prescribed for the pain afterwards proved to be addictive, an addiction he needed several years to break. Reynolds underwent back surgery in May 2009 and a quintuple heart bypass in February 2010.
Homes
On August 16, 2011, Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation filed foreclosure papers in Martin County, claiming Reynolds owed $1.2 million on his Hobe Sound, Florida, home. He owned the Burt Reynolds Ranch, where scenes for Smokey and the Bandit were filmed and there was once a petting zoo, until its sale during bankruptcy. In April 2014, the 153-acre rural property was rezoned for residential use so that the Palm Beach County school system could sell it to residential developer K. Hovnanian Homes.
Links:
- Burt Reynolds at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Burt Reynolds in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Burt Reynolds & Friends Museum
- “Show Business: Frog Prince” ‘Time’ August 21, 1972
- “Burt Reynolds” at Florida State University