The one and only movie Burt Reynolds made without his toupee: “No one ever asked me before”
People were often so preoccupied with what was on his top lip that it often went unnoticed that Burt Reynolds wore a toupee, which became such a staple part of his onscreen repertoire that he wouldn’t be caught dead on the big screen without his trusted hairpiece in tow.
He sported his own follicles in John Boorman’s Deliverance, but after that, he realised that his once-luscious locks were becoming too thin for his liking. Ask anyone to name the first word that comes to mind when they think of Reynolds, and there’s a high chance that the answer will be “moustache.”
Perhaps that was part of his grand master plan; since he was known as Hollywood’s marquee moustachioed leading man, whatever was or wasn’t going on up top wouldn’t get mentioned as much. In his defence, he wasn’t overly precious about it, with the star once calling out his peers who made it far too obvious that they were devastated by their balding pates.
“Most guys with toupees overcompensate,” he pontificated. “They want too much hair. They end up piling it high, looking like a weird flower.” He preferred the more subtle approach, and from the moment he decided his thinning scalp needed enhancement, it became a fixture of almost every movie he worked on.
Almost, because there was one role where Reynolds threw caution to the wind, hung his hairpiece on the rack, and left it at home. It wasn’t a non-negotiable part of the equation, but since he was so desperate to land the part of David Dilbeck in Andrew Bergman’s Striptease, he happily went without.
He still faced an uphill battle to be cast in a movie that would gain infamy for being so terrible, and he only ended up in the six-time Razzie winner because Gene Hackman had turned down the part of the sleazy congressman, an about-turn from what used to be the norm, when Reynolds was turning down every role under the sun.
When asked what made him change the habit of a lifetime and make a film sans toupee for the first time ever, Reynolds issued a response that was as on-the-nose as it was obvious: “No one ever asked me before,” he informed The Seattle Times, before comparing himself to one of his most famous co-stars, who also isn’t averse to wearing a wig or two.
“As Dolly Parton once said,” he remarked. “You can throw her hair and my hair in the middle of the room, and you still have a couple of good things left.” Taking his Best Little Whorehouse in Texas colleague’s advice to heart, Reynolds had figuratively cast his follicular fakery into the middle of the room, simply because he’d been asked for the first time ever.
It almost makes you wish he’d done it for a better picture, since Striptease failed to live up to the buzz surrounding Demi Moore’s record-breaking paycheque, and almost torpedoed her entire career instead.
