2023-09-05 22:10:19
Men like Burt Reynolds, Hollywood’s late ’70s and early ’80s money king, don’t exist anymore. The son of a half-blooded Native American made history going from the bottom to the top and back once more. He was the first male star to be photographed naked for a magazine, collected millions of dollars and lost them. He struggled with drugs and had countless love affairs and affairs. In its heyday, it was enough to get in fast cars and flash the taillights to stupid cops. In this country, people once loved this guy who obviously had a sense of humor and who always had a hint of irony in his eyes. In Hollywood, it seemed, he never took it that seriously. Blockbusters like “A Cooked Rascal” (two parts, 1977 and 1980) shaped a whole generation of moviegoers. For a long time followingwards, the coolness idol of the 1980s made a living from self-examination of his own image with a wink. Five years ago, on September 6, 2018, Burt Reynolds died at the age of 82 from complications of a heart attack.
Born on February 11, 1936, to a half-Blood Indian father and police officer, he was on his way to becoming a football star before injuries prevented a promising professional career. The dark-haired muscular man discovered acting as an alternative to the sporting limelight. He acted in theaters in New York, worked as a stuntman and gained attention with roles in spaghetti westerns in the late ’60s. In 1972 he had his breakthrough with John Boorman’s disturbing film masterpiece “Everyone is First to Die”. Reynolds played an outdoorsman and tough dog who guides his wealthy friends – including Jon Voight – through a traumatically dark adventure trip into the American wilderness. His cool, tough man image was born.
In the same year, Burt Reynolds posed naked for the US magazine “Cosmopolitan” with a cold cigar between his dazzling white jacket crowns, his steely body lounging lasciviously on a bearskin. A legendary shoot that he later regretted: “It was really stupid, I don’t know what I was thinking, I really wish I had never done it.”
“I became addicted to sleeping pills”
In his prime during the late ’70s and early ’80s, when he raked in the highest wages to date, women fell at his feet. And the men, especially the young mainstream audience, wanted to be like him – Burt Reynolds, the cool guy with the cowboy hat and the wide, mischievous grin underneath.
The decline began in 1984 when a stuntman accidentally hit him in the face with a real chair instead of the prepared one while he was recording “City Heat”. “For months I had to see a specialist to fix my jaw. There was nothing to do with work. During the day I lay curled up on the bed like an embryo, at night I stared at the bottle. I became addicted to sleeping pills,” he later recalled in an interview . First the friends stayed away, then the roles.
Burt Reynolds, who counts John Wayne among his role models, lived in expensive houses and allegedly owned over 50 cars. In the following years he was passed down. One film following the other flopped, oaths of disclosure followed, a ruinous divorce, and in the end he even had more hair on his chest than on his head. But that was the least of the evils and might be quickly covered up with a toupee.
The professional crisis lasted until he made a small comeback as the slimy governor in “Striptease” opposite Demi Moore in the mid-90s. Though the film fell at the box office and was dubbed “the worst movie of the ’90s” by many, Burt Reynolds was back. In 1998, his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant cult film “Boogie Nights” also impressed the critics. Reynolds played porn producer Jack Horner, won a Golden Globe and received an Oscar nomination. “I’ve risen from the ashes more times than the old phoenix,” Reynolds said at the time. After that, as if his creditors’ claims for millions had nothing to do with him, he moved back to a posh villa in Los Angeles.
The plan with Tarantino
From then on, Burt Reynolds, who had a 29-year-old adopted son from his five-year marriage to actress Loni Anderson, lived largely from short appearances and the marketing of his image as a style icon of yesteryear. Most recently in autumn 2010, when he played a tough secret agent from the Cold War era in the US television series “Burn Notice”. But his eventful private life also made the headlines once more. In 2009, Reynolds had to go to a rehab clinic following collapsing because of an addiction to painkillers, followed in spring 2010 by a severe open-heart bypass surgery. It was also not without financial consequences: In mid-2011, Reynolds had to file for bankruptcy following he might no longer pay the mortgage on his house in Florida. But some smaller roles followed.
Shortly before his death, Reynolds was to be given a small role in a Quentin Tarantino film. A classic comeback, as the director had already made possible for some of Hollywood’s greats. But it didn’t come to that anymore. Reynolds died in a Florida hospital and his ashes were interred in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the first to speak up on Twitter. Reynolds was one of his heroes, he said, paving the way for all those who followed him from sportsman and athlete to successful actor.
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