Burt Reynolds: Playboy Interview

By now, the fellow smiling impishly on this month's cover needs no introduction; but in case you've been away for the past ten years, his name is Burt Reynolds and he's a movie star. In fact, he's the world's biggest movie star, even though he stands only 5'5", weighs 122 pounds and likes sheep and young boys. Only kidding there, Burt. Reynolds is actually about six feet tall, weighs around 175 and likes women. Boy, does he like women. His reputation as a hyperactive Lothario has been fueled by rumored romances with everyone from Catherine Deneuve and Lauren Hutton to such non-Hollywood types as tennis ace Chris Evert and country singer Tammy Wynette. But that's only rumor. The documented loves of his life have been ex-wife (and former Laugh-In comedienne) Judy Carne, Dinah Shore and his current flame, Sally Field.

For most of this decade, Reynolds has labored in low-level action films that critics have hated but moviegoers have loved. Now firmly entrenched as the screen's leading box-office attraction, Reynolds reportedly gets $3,000,000 a picture, and that's just when he hires out as an actor. Reynolds is also a director, and has lately taken a fling at producing his own films. The End and Hooper, the two movies he coproduced, between them will gross about $100,000,000.

Reynolds has vaulted to superstardom on the strength of his charm and comedic skills. In most of his roles—including his detective duties in Shamus, Fuzz and Hustle—he portrays a kind of macho pixy who often doesn't take himself or even the film he's in very seriously. Thus, in Smokey and the Bandit—the Gone with the Wind of good-ol'-boy movies—the film's biggest laugh comes when Reynolds breaches cinema's third wall by winking at the audience. And it's an audience he has shrewdly built for himself through frequent appearances on The Tonight Show and other TV talk fests. For a man intent on becoming a pro-football player 25 years ago, life has sure taken a couple of funny bounces.

Born on February 11, 1936, Reynolds grew up in Riviera Beach, Florida—not far from Palm Beach. He was the son of the local police chief. At Palm Beach High School, he lettered in baseball, basketball, track and football, his favorite sport. A speedy, all-state running back, Buddy Reynolds received scholarship offers from 26 colleges and eventually settled on Florida State when its then—head coach, Tom Nugent, pointed out the obvious advantages of attending a school whose student body was 75 percent female. The highlight of Reynolds' freshman season came against Auburn, when he ran 54 yards from scrimmage before being knocked cold on the one-yard line by a War Eagle tackler named Fob James, who has since succeeded George Wallace as the governor of Alabama. The following season, a knee injury put an end to Reynolds' football career, and left him in a state of despair. "I didn't want to end up sitting in a bar and talking about the good old days, like a lot of old jocks do," he recently told a visitor. "It's shattering when you've been someone for a brief period in your life, and then suddenly it's over and you're nothing."

Reynolds left Florida State and enrolled at Palm Beach Junior College, where, at the suggestion of an English teacher, he tried out for—and got—the role John Garfield made famous in Outward Bound. "At that point, I realized I needed to be better than everybody else at something, but I didn't know what," he recalled. "Athletes are performers, and when I got the part, I realized acting might be exactly what I was looking for."

After a year of junior college, Reynolds worked in summer stock and then moved to New York City, where he studied acting under Wynn Handman of the Neighborhood Playhouse. He then became a stunt man on TV dramas, which led to a Universal contract and featured roles in Riverboat and Gunsmoke. Following a period during which he played bad guys on innumerable TV series, Reynolds landed a series of his own in 1966, when he starred in Hawk. Since then, he hasn't often been out of the public eye.

To interview Hollywood's reigning male sex symbol, Playboy sent freelancer Lawrence Linderman to meet with Reynolds at his home in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. Linderman reports:

"When he's not on his ranch in Florida, Burt Reynolds lives in a handsome Spanish-style home that, thanks to California's insane real-estate spiral, is now worth several million dollars. The two-story house contains a number of expensive and exquisite Western paintings, a recent enthusiasm of Reynolds', and outside there's an $80,000 tennis court and what appears to be an Olympic-size tiled swimming pool.

"When I met him, Reynolds was wearing tapered white-satin swim trunks and black Nike running shoes. Without too much in the way of preliminaries, I followed him out of the house, down a steep flight of stone steps and around back to the pool, passing a garaged Rolls-Royce and a Trans Am on the way. Reynolds is built like a tall middleweight boxer, well muscled but thin. 'You can never be too rich or too thin,' he told me when we got to the pool. He then lay back in a chaise longue, spread sun lotion on himself and proceeded to work on his tan. Bruiser, his huge Rhodesian Ridgeback, sat at his feet. I sat at his feet. I'm very good at sitting at the feet of celebrities. I felt like I was back interviewing Muhammad Ali, except that Muhammad's got the game down to a science: He whispers.

"Reynolds, as it turns out, is a highly candid man who's a lot friendlier than he lets on at first, especially to people bearing tape recorders. After a rather stiff first meeting, Reynolds and I wound up talking for more than 13 hours, and the resulting interview will, I think, surprise a number of readers. Before meeting him, I'd been struck by the number of times he'd talked about wanting to be known as an accomplished actor. It provided the opening subject for our interview."