Lewis Medlock in ‘Deliverance’: the iconic role Burt Reynolds got only because nobody else wanted it
The hardest thing about becoming a movie star is finding the role that makes it happen in the first place. At any given time, thousands upon thousands of aspiring actors dream of seeing their name in lights, and sometimes all it takes is a combination of luck and circumstance, or in Burt Reynolds‘ case, disinterest from everyone who was offered it before him.
Although he made his screen debut in the late 1950s, it would be over a decade before Reynolds became a mainstream concern. He kept himself busy appearing in a multitude of TV shows and playing bit-part roles in features with the occasional lead thrown in, but he wasn’t remotely close to being a household name.
Of course, that all changed in 1972 when John Boorman’s Deliverance rode a wave of controversy to massive success. It recouped its budget more than 20 times over at the box office, punctured the zeitgeist, infiltrated the cultural lexicon, and earned three Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
The haunting backwoods thriller was nothing like the films Reynolds would make once he’d cracked the A-list, but the fact remains that the visibility generated by his performance as Lewis Medlock was a game-changing moment for the actor. Suddenly, he’d rocketed his way up casting wish lists and was being tasked to headline studio-backed action flicks, and by the end of the decade, he was the most bankable name in American cinema.
However, that only happened because nobody else wanted to play the guy. Donald Sutherland and Charlton Heston both declined the part of Medlock when Deliverance was hoping to secure a name for the gig, and when the list of potential candidates continued dwindling, Reynolds was about the only one left willing to take a chance on Boorman’s picture.
“The studio was very unenthusiastic about casting Burt in Deliverance,” the filmmaker admitted to The Hollywood Reporter. “They wanted a big star. I had gone to Jack Nicholson, but he wanted a half-million dollars, which was outrageous in 1972.”
After being rejected by Nicholson, Boorman then turned his attention to an even more vaunted name, who ironically became a career-long nemesis of Reynolds. “Then I went to Marlon Brando,” he continued. “And he told me he’d do it for whatever Jack was asking for, so in the end, the studio told me to go ahead and make it with nobodies for no money. They had very little confidence in the material.”
Deliverance was the movie that finally put Reynolds on the map and firmly placed him on the industry’s radar, a defining moment that only came about because Sutherland, Heston, Nicholson, Brando, and no doubt another couple of high-profile names turned their noses up at it.
