The actor nobody likes that Burt Reynolds fell in love with: “I hate to admit it”
Even though the goal is to become as big of a star as possible, sell the most tickets, and become one of the names at the top of every studio’s wish list, making it in Hollywood isn’t necessarily a popularity contest. Burt Reynolds was a leading man and a draw who made plenty of enemies, so it makes sense he’d fall in love with one of the industry’s least popular actors.
Studio executives don’t really care if a performer rubs their peers the wrong way when they’re still capable of making them money, and Reynolds was indicative of that. He was a brash, cocksure, and confident leading man who sold tickets based on his signature brand of moustachioed masculinity and rugged physicality, which made him one of his era’s foremost A-listers.
The downside is that a lot of people didn’t like him, not that he cared. Marlon Brando famously despised Reynolds with every fibre of his being, Sally Field was aghast at being called the love of his life, Kathleen Turner hated him with an intense and burning passion, and Paul Thomas Anderson had a thoroughly miserable time directing him to the best performance of his career.
With that in mind, pairing Reynolds with another actor who had a reputation for being a bit of an arsehole could have been a recipe for disaster, only for the two to immediately hit it off. When he was paired with Chevy Chase for 2017’s dramedy The Last Movie Star, it turned out that he’d found a kindred spirit.
“He’s cast beautifully, the people that are in it,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’m in love with Chevy Chase. I hate to admit it on national television.” That puts Reynolds firmly in the minority, with the former Saturday Night Live stalwart having spent virtually his entire career bugging the shit out of people.
He had his issues with SNL alumni Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, and Robert Downey Jr, Will Ferrell called him a “monster,” Kevin Smith said he was an egotistical prick, Chris Columbus was driven off the set of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation by his behaviour, John Carpenter described working with him on Memoirs of an Invisible Man “a horror story,” and his Community colleagues couldn’t stand the guy.
Based on their shared combustibility, there were realistically only two ways things would go for Reynolds and Chase. They would either be at each other’s throats for the duration of The Last Movie Star‘s production or end up as thick as thieves. Fortunately, at least for writer and director Adam Rifkin, it was the latter, leaving the Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit frontman as one of the very few people to have ever worked with Chase who have anything nice to say about him.
