Burt Reynolds, the mustachioed movie star with over 200 film and TV credits who was made famous in titles like Gunsmoke, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, and Boogie Nights, died on Thursday in Florida. He was 82.
Reynolds was something of the American masculinity ideal for his era—his nude centerfold for Cosmopolitan magazine (which he later claimed lost him the Academy Award) reportedly sold over a million copies, and eventually launched Playgirl magazine—but he also had the box office prowess to prove it: “He was Hollywood’s top-grossing star in every year from 1978 through 1982, equaling the longest stretch the business had seen since the days of Bing Crosby in the 1940s,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote. “In 1978, he had four movies playing in theaters at the same time.”
He worked well into his later years—as recently as March, Reynolds was back in the press, promoting his latest projects. His movie Defining Moments is set to be released in December 2018, and he was also cast in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood alongside Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio. “I don’t know why I think this, but maybe I’ve got my best work ahead,” he told The New York Times. “Maybe I’ll be putting my teeth in the glass, and maybe it will be a very different kind of role, but I want to do something where I’m not driving a car or a truck, where it’s real. Something that people wouldn’t expect me to do. Probably a man in search of himself. But we’re always searching for ourselves anyway.”
In recent years, the ravages of time (and his history of doing of his own stunts) had caught up with the star: “If I was as tough as I’m made out to be in movies, I wouldn’t have to worry,” he said. “But I can’t beat my way out of a paper bag now. I’m too beat-up. I haven’t had two hours of no pain for, gosh, I don’t know, honey, 20 years. Because it was always this macho crap that you’re full of, and I always thought, Well, hell, I could do that [stunt]. And I could, except sometimes I didn’t quite make it.” Reynolds was married to Judy Carne from 1963 to 1965 and Loni Anderson from 1988 to 1993, with whom he had a son, Quinton Anderson Reynolds. His representative told the press that his family was with him when he died.
“I always wanted to experience everything and go down swinging,” he wrote in the final paragraph of his memoir, But Enough About Me. “Well, so far, so good. . . . I know I’m old, but I feel young. And there’s one thing they can never take away: Nobody had more fun than I did.”