Actor

Born February 11th, 1936

Died September 6th 2018

Burt Reynolds, who has died aged 82, was one of the most popular stars in Hollywood, year after year in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

For five successive years from 1978 to 1982 he was Hollywood’s most bankable star. And yet he never won a major award, starred in few "classics" and never quite attained the iconic or legendary status of John Wayne, Steve McQueen or his contemporary Clint Eastwood.

A promising American football career was cut short by injury before he gained success in movies as an action hero, frequently doing his own stunts in the early days. He proved most popular as an action man in lightweight comedy-dramas, beginning with Smokey and the Bandit (1977). He was the eponymous Bandit, taking a trailer full of booze over state lines, pursued by Smokey (the police). Various sequels followed.

Before that he spent many years in television, playing, in his words, “Indians, eager young men in the background or half-breed mongrels” and then graduating to starring roles in Gunsmoke (1962-65), Hawk (1966) and Dan August (1970-71).

He was already well-known from television when John Boorman cast him in the survival movie Deliverance (1972), one of the few films that Reynolds felt challenged him as an actor.

It was round about the time of Deliverance that he posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine. He seemed surprised it damaged his reputation as a serious actor. Often he made headlines with his off-screen activities rather than his films.

On one occasion he drove his car into a swimming pool and he dated a succession of beautiful and famous women and was married to comedienne Judy Carne and to actress Loni Anderson. Both marriages ended in divorce. He also had a lengthy relationship with Sally Field.

He was born Burton Leon Reynolds in Lansing, Michigan, in 1936. His ancestors supposedly include Scottish and Cherokee. His father was a police chief in one of the suburbs of Miami, Florida.

He went to Florida State University on a football scholarship and was signed to play for the Baltimore Colts. After multiple injuries ended his career, he became increasingly involved in student drama, where, perhaps surprisingly for those familiar only with his knockabout action movies, he made his mark with his interpretation of Shakespeare. He won a state-wide drama award and a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse in New York and appeared in a production of Mister Roberts with Charlton Heston as early as 1956.

He had a number of casual jobs, including bouncer and truck driver, before his acting career gathered momentum.

In 1959 he landed a recurring role in the western series Riverboat. Gunsmoke (shown in the UK as Gun Law) was already well established when Reynolds signed on as the “halfbreed” blacksmith Quint Asper in 1962. The series began on radio and had been on TV since 1955. Reynolds would go on to appear in 50 episodes before leaving the show in 1965 to pursue other ventures, including the westerns Navajo Joe (1966) 100 Rifles and Sam Whiskey (both 1969) and Fuzz and Deliverance (both 1972).

Reportedly he was offered, or at least sounded out for, James Bond when Sean Connery quit after You Only Live Twice (1967), but did not think it would work with an American as 007, and he turned down the role of Hans Solo in Star Wars (1977). By that time he was already scoring big anyway with other films.

Star Wars may have been the highest-grossing film of 1977, but Smokey and the Bandit was No 3 on the annual list and Reynolds’ success was consolidated by other big hits – Hooper (1978), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), though the film of which he was proudest from that period was the romantic drama Starting Over (1979), for which both Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen got Oscar nominations.

Reynolds also directed and produced films and worked in theatre – he set up his own theatre company in Florida. But by the late 1980s his star was fading and his films no longer spelled box office gold. Dwindling income, an extravagant playboy lifestyle and some unwise investments led to the loss of his ranch and saw him filing for bankruptcy in the 1990s.

He did belatedly secure an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a pornographer in Boogie Nights (1997), a role that had been turned down by a string of actors including Bill Murray and Harvey Keitel. Reynolds “hated” the film’s young director Paul Thomas Anderson – “full of himself” - and he declined the chance to appear in Anderson’s next film Magnolia (1999).

Reynolds made several dozen more movies. He had a supporting role in Bean (1997), he was Boss Hogg in a 2005 film version of The Dukes of Hazzard and there was a 2005 remake of his 1974 prison American football film The Longest Yard. But he was no longer the top name on the billboard. This time Adam Sandler played the lead and Reynolds was the coach.

It was an odd career – from acclaim for Shakespearean readings to huge success as a knockabout action hero and notoriety as a nude pin-up through to supporting roles when he had once been the main attraction. “Most of the roles I’ve done have been the kind where I’ve reacted rather than acted,” he told one interviewer.

BRIAN PENDREIGH