Burt Reynolds (1936–2018,) fully Burton Leon Reynolds Jr., was an American actor, director, and producer. He is celebrated for the characteristic swagger that he brought to dozens of films and TV shows over a decades-long career. He was also infamous for his extravagant and explosive lifestyle.
Born in Lansing, Michigan, Reynolds made his film debut in Angel Baby (1961) and was a recurring performer in television series including Riverboat (1959–60,) Gunsmoke (1962–65) and Dan August (1970–71.)
Reynolds consolidated his position as a top screen star after a breakthrough role in Deliverance (1972) and posing naked as Cosmopolitan magazine’s first-ever nude centerfold in 1972. After the success of light-hearted, macho comedies Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978) he was voted the USA’s number-one box-office star.
Reynolds’s popularity waned in the 1980s, even though he showed talent as a character actor in Breaking In (1989.) He found renewed popularity in the television sitcom Evening Shade (1990–94,) for which he received an Emmy Award, and in 1998 was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the film Boogie Nights (1997.)
Reynolds’s autobiographies are My Life (1994) and But Enough About Me: A Memoir (2015.)
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They call that [44 years] middle age, but I don’t know too many 88-year-olds.
—Burt Reynolds
Marriage is about the most expensive way for the average man to get his laundry done.
—Burt Reynolds