BURT REYNOLDS

(11 February 1936 - 6 September 2018)

The American actor Burt Reynolds, who has died from heart problems at the age of 82, was quoted as saying: “My films were the kind they only show in prisons and in airplanes, because nobody can leave.” He was famous for turning down good roles but nevertheless enjoyed a sixty-year career in Hollywood and on television, and also produced and directed for TV and the movies. As a teenager, he was a good athlete and nearly had a football career until a knee injury put paid to it. In college in Florida he dropped out and went to New York to become an actor. After being seen in a production of Mr Roberts, he gained TV work from 1958 until his film debut in Paul Wendkos’ Angel Baby (1961) with George Hamilton and Salome Jens. More TV series, Westerns and war films followed and they gradually improved in quality with the likes of 100 Rifles, Sam Whiskey, Impasse and Shark. In the early 1970s, Reynolds had his own TV series, Dan August, playing the title role of a police lieutenant. After another detective in Fuzz came John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), a film turned down by Brando, Henry Fonda and James Stewart as being too risky. It was the making of Reynolds’ career and was followed by Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Shamus, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, White Lightning, The Mean Machine, At Long Last Love, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, Lucky Lady, Hustle and many more. Playing mainly macho action heroes, his signature casting was for films such as Smokey and the Bandit that gave rise to two sequels. Then there was The Cannonball Run I and II, Sharky’s Machine, The Man Who Loved Women, City Heat and Heat, after which he seemed to have reached his peak, but not before becoming the top money-spinning movie actor for five consecutive years. He both appeared in and directed Gator, The End, Sharky’s Machine, Stick and The Last Producer, plus several television shows. Reynolds worked hard in the 1990s and had some popular TV series (B.L. Stryker, Evening Shade) but the films were not great until Boogie Nights in 1997, which he disliked making but which gave him an Oscar nomination. Never unemployed for sixty years, he continued acting and doing voice-over work and still has a film, Defining Moments, that’s due to be released at Christmas 2018. In his time Reynolds turned down James Bond, the Bruce Willis role in Die Hard, Han Solo in Star Wars, Jack Nicholson’s part in Terms of Endearment, and somehow failed to get Rosemary’s Baby, Tucker, Magnolia, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Soapdish and Zardoz, the last due to illness, and he regretted posing nearly nude for Cosmopolitan magazine after Deliverance. He married the British actresses Judy Carne and Loni Anderson and divorced both. With Anderson he adopted a son, Quinton. Between wives he had a relationship with the singer Dinah Shore and was also the partner and frequent co-star of Sally Field from 1977 to 1982.

MICHAEL DARVELL