‘Starting Over’: The change-of-pace film role Burt Reynolds fought to secure
One key difference between actors and movie stars is that the latter can regularly become victims of their own success, leaving them pigeonholed as a certain type of performer who can only do one thing, even if they do it very well. Burt Reynolds found that out the hard way when he tried to be taken more seriously, facing opposition from studios who didn’t want him anywhere near a drama.
It was something he was acutely aware of and a crossroads he stopped at more than once throughout his career. Reynolds may have been crowned as the biggest draw in Hollywood for five consecutive years, but he knew there were only so many times he could return to the action comedy well before it ran dry.
On the other hand, he was wracked with doubts as to whether he was even capable of emulating the likes of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Jack Nicholson: peers who couldn’t open a movie at the box office to quite the same level as him, yet remained an attractive proposition for audiences while simultaneously spreading their wings and competing for awards in high-profile prestige pictures.
In the midst of his half-decade reign as the industry’s favourite leading man, Reynolds took the plunge and threw his hat into the ring for Starting Over, director Alan J Paluka’s dramedy that follows a husband freshly separated from his wife who moves to a different city joins a club for male divorcees and becomes caught up in a love triangle involving a potential new flame and his estranged spouse.
It was a performative change of pace, but as Reynolds confessed to Entertainment Weekly, getting the opportunity wasn’t easy. “Nobody wanted me,” he offered. “My agent said, ‘It’s so hard to convince anyone that if you got a divorce, you’d be lost in the single world’. I sat next to Alan Paluka at dinner, and he said, ‘Let’s do a test’. At the time, I was really hot, but I said, ‘Anything you want.'”
Reynolds was at the height of his popularity, but he still had to jump through hoops, audition, and perform a screen test before Paluka and the creative team were convinced he had the chops to pull it off. Even then, he remained equally bitter and adamant that his residual fame and effortless natural talents worked against him during awards season.
“Everyone was nominated for an Oscar but me,” he lamented. “I knew the Academy couldn’t get past that I was having a great time, making it look easy.” Sour grapes, maybe, but he’s not entirely wrong: Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen, who played Reynolds’ new love interest and wife in Starting Over, were shortlisted for ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ respectively, making him the only one of the central trio who missed out.
