“More than anything”: why Burt Reynolds regretted missing out on ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’
In the 1970s, Hollywood was overflowing with young, hungry talent. From the spate of auteur directors like Francis Ford Coppola and William Friedkin to the generation of Method actors like Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, the industry was undergoing a sea change, and there weren’t enough projects to go around. It was in this context that Burt Reynolds got the disappointment of a lifetime, a snub he carried with him to the grave.
Reynolds had achieved stardom in the 1960s playing the blacksmith Quint Asper in the long-running western television series Gunsmoke. He continued to star in short-lived series and was a favourite guest on talk shows throughout the decade, but it wasn’t until the brutal drama Deliverance in 1972 that he became a movie star.
Throughout his career, Reynolds was often in competition with Clint Eastwood for parts. With his tall, muscular frame, thick moustache, and history as a college football star, he was the quintessential all-American male. But he had also gotten his start in the theatre, and as such, his acting goals were more diverse than his appearance might suggest.
In the early 1970s, there was a script going around that was based on a novel and a hit off-Broadway play, and the Gunsmoke actor wanted in. Kirk Douglas had purchased the rights to Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962 with the intention to star in the film adaptation, but when it came time to cast the movie in 1969, Douglas was 53, which was significantly older than the protagonist, Randle McMurphy, a patient at a psychiatric institution who incites a revolt against the oppressive medical staff. Gene Hackman, James Caan, and Marlon Brando were considered for the part, but Reynolds was also in the running. In the end, he lost to Jack Nicholson, who won an Oscar for his charismatic and unpredictable portrayal of McMurphy.
Reynolds never got over his disappointment. In a 1976 conversation with Andy Warhol in Interview magazine, the actor said, “I wanted to do Cuckoo’s Nest desperately. I wanted to do that more than anything I’ve ever read in my life.” He admitted that he still hadn’t seen the film because of how much it stung.
It makes sense that the same year Nicholson won an Oscar for playing the part, Reynolds would be a bit sensitive, but four decades later, the actor was still licking his wounds. In a 2017 rerelease of the interview, Reynolds added an annotation to that section of the conversation, writing, “I like Jack Nicholson personally, and he is brilliant in everything he does, but I still haven’t seen it. I’m an old man, for Christ’s sake. When do you give up on jealousy?”
Never, apparently. Reynolds died the following year and, as far as we know, stayed true to his word about never seeing the film. He had plenty to be proud of at the end of his life. He’d even earned an Oscar nomination in 1998 for his role as a director of pornography in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 film Boogie Nights. Ironically, that also happened to be the movie he regretted most.
