The three feuds of Burt Reynolds’ career
Burt Reynolds, one of the biggest stars of the late 1970s and early 1980s, could have been even more successful had he not rejected two iconic franchises within a short space of time. But, in the end, being a cantankerous actor of the golden age would become his schtick.
As well as turning down the opportunity to play Han Solo in Star Wars – which, of course, saw Harrison Ford become an overnight superstar in what was the highest-grossing release in history following its release – he was also under consideration to step into the tux and replace George Lazenby after his solitary stint as James Bond.
Despite first gaining mainstream attention on the small screen the decade previously, though, Reynolds wouldn’t crack cinema in a major way until 1972’s Deliverance. The backwoods thriller would be released the same year as Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather, which he could have been a part of had he not made an enemy of Marlon Brando.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens, Reynolds hinted that the rumour Brando had threatened to quit the project had he been hired wasn’t entirely inaccurate, remarking how he was “flattered that he was upset.” Years after The Godfather became an instant milestone in modern cinema, the Academy Award-winning Vito Corleone actor was captured venting his deep-seated disdain for his moustachioed nemesis.
As noted by The Huffington Post, behind-the-scenes footage from Apocalypse Now found Brando ranting about just how much he detested Reynolds: “He is the epitome of something that makes me want to throw up,” he said. “He is the epitome of everything that is disgusting about the thespian, he worships at the temple of his own narcissism.”
During the leaner period of his career towards the end of the 1980s, Reynolds found his second legendary opponent in the form of Kathleen Turner, his co-star in the flop comedy Switching Channels. For his part, he named her as the single most overrated actor of her generation. On her end, she recalled their shared animosity every bit as fondly.
Telling Vulture that “working with Burt Reynolds was terrible,” he described his behaviour as “shocking” and the atmosphere he’d cultivated on set as “very hostile”, all of which stemmed from her being the first name listed in the cast at his expense. According to Turner, he couldn’t sanction the idea of “taking second place to a woman,” even though that’s the way it was on the call sheet.
Even when he made a remarkable comeback with a scene-stealing supporting part in Boogie Nights, Reynolds continued to rub people the wrong way, in this case Paul Thomas Anderson. Denigrating the filmmaker as “young and full of himself” to GQ, the veteran revealed that when the writer and director previewed what he believed to be some impressive camerawork, Reynolds dismissively “named five pictures that had the same kind of shot.”
Anderson did say that rumours of their ongoing feud was “almost true” and contributed to a “really tense three days on the set,” but he ultimately felt it worked to the movie’s benefit. At least for the third and final major feud of Reynolds’ life and career, his opposite number didn’t end up holding any grudges.
