Burt Reynolds’ biggest issue with Burt Reynolds: “The greatest curse of Hollywood”
Throughout his storied career, there was one constant with Burt Reynolds when he talked about the movies he made. It didn’t matter which year he was asked about it, and it didn’t matter how his career was faring at the time. He could have been the biggest star in Hollywood or an over-the-hill has-been trying desperately to get back on top. Regardless of the situation, Reynolds always had the same beef with himself – and even called it “the greatest curse of Hollywood”.
In 1972, Reynolds spoke to The New York Times on the eve of the release of Deliverance, arguably the best movie he was ever a part of. At the time of the interview, Reynolds hadn’t seen the film yet, but he had heard scuttlebutt that director John Boorman had helmed something special. In later years, he would wax lyrical to NPR about his co-stars Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, saying, “Deliverance was an extraordinary film in the sense that it was these four actors; I don’t think you could get four actors who would do what we did.”
The problem that Reynolds recognised, though, even as early as ’72, was that Deliverance was perhaps the only truly good movie he had made up to that point. “I feel like I’m pregnant,” he joked. “I almost don’t want the picture to come out. I’ve waited 15 years to do a really good movie. Most of my stuff, I don’t say how good it is because mostly I don’t think it’s good.” This time, though, he’d heard such good reports that he was allowing himself to hope he’d finally chosen correctly.
In truth, therein lay the problem – the Achilles heel that would still plague Reynolds’ career decades later. “I made so many bad pictures,” Reynolds lamented. “I was never able to turn anything down.” He added, “I’ve taken everything that’s come along. Robert Redford is the classic example of an actor who waits for the right part. He tells them to go to hell, he’s going skiing.”
Amazingly, even though this epiphany struck Reynolds in ’72, he was still singing the same tune in ’81 – and by that point, he’d made a mind-boggling 22 more terrible movies following Deliverance. “If I have any regrets, it is that I haven’t been more like Redford and those guys,” Reynolds told the Times, once again invoking the name of the perpetually acclaimed The Way We Were star. “When they don’t like a film, they walk away from it. I always see the possibilities. I’m always booked up for five years.”
Now, while Reynolds would tell anyone who listened that he simply couldn’t resist the lure of a bad movie, he also admitted that he was aware a ton of people paid to see those movies. In fact, by the late 1970s, Deliverance and a host of action comedies like Smokey and the Bandit had helped him become the most bankable star in Hollywood. Still, though, he always seemed to crave critical acclaim – despite making choices that actively worked against this desire.
In truth, Reynolds’ biggest issue with his career was that he had cursed himself into being “a well‐known unknown.” By that, he meant that he had become so synonymous with bad movies that when someone in Hollywood asked, “How about Burt Reynolds?” for something that stood a chance of being good, he believed the decision-makers turned their noses up and said, “Naw, we need a new face.”
