He then returned to New York to acquire more acting training. Positive reviews for his performance led to him touring with the production and even driving the tour bus. There, Reynolds met Joanne Woodward, who helped him get an agent and win a role in "Tea and Sympathy" at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. But fate intervened in the form of a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse, a summer stock theater in New York. If anything, he viewed it as an agreeable alternative to more physically demanding work. He ended up winning not only the lead role in the production, but the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance.ĭespite this early acclaim, acting was still not Reynolds' main endeavor. While taking classes at Palm Beach Junior College, Reynolds was convinced by a drama teacher to audition for a play. Devastated, he briefly considered following in his father's footsteps and becoming a police officer, but the elder Reynolds convinced him to keep up his studies and become a parole officer. However, a pair of accidents - one on the gridiron, the other, more devastating, in a car - ended his dreams of an athletic career. Reynolds eventually chose Florida State University for his higher learning, and fully expected to make a career in professional football even being drafted by the Baltimore Colts. By the time he was a senior, he had claimed the First Team All-State and All-Southern titles, and received multiple offers for football scholarships. He had never shown much interest in organized sports prior to this, but he took to the game with enthusiasm and skill. In later years, Reynolds would describe his father as a tough disciplinarian who never expressed pride in or love for his son, who would later seek that approval in the public eye.Īt 14, Reynolds discovered football. This most likely clashed with the family's newfound status in the town Reynolds' father had transitioned from the contractor job to owner of a lunch counter before joining the Riviera Beach police force and eventually becoming its chief. At times, this stance could get the better of him school zoning forced him to attend a high school far from his home, and the discomfort led to moments of truancy and devil-may-care stunts. The region and its rugged landscape and people held a particular fascination for the young Reynolds, and his feelings of exclusion and isolation soon gave way to a more social outlook. After his discharge from the Army in 1945, Reynolds' father moved the family to Riviera Beach, FL, where he had been hired as a general contractor for a housing development. Reynolds himself claimed Cherokee ancestry. When his father returned from service in Europe, the family returned to Michigan, where he struggled to fit in with the local children, who were comprised of rural families and Native Americans. Army while Reynolds was a boy, and for a time, they shuttled between their hometown of Lansing and Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. 11, 1936, his early years were filled with transition. Burt Reynolds died in his adopted hometown of Jupiter, Florida on September 6, 2018. He was remarkably active, though if not at the level of his '70s heyday, for much of the next decade, and retained the roguish, self-deprecating persona that made him such a superstar decades before. Redemption came in the unlikely form of "Boogie Nights," an indie drama about the lives of adult film stars Reynolds' graying presence meshed perfectly with his character, an ambitious but flawed director, and he earned an Oscar nod as well as a career revival. But a string of flops and personal setbacks knocked him off his perch at the top of the box office, and by the early '90s, he was not only out of step with the movie industry, but financially bankrupt. His easygoing nature and ladies' man reputation made him enormously popular with audiences, which he parlayed into a string of popular comedies and action films through the 1970s and '80s. He discovered acting in the late 1950s after injuries put an end to his dreams of football stardom, but he struggled to find his niche for over a decade until his turn in the gripping thriller "Deliverance" thrust him into the spotlight. One of the most popular stars in the world for decades, Burt Reynolds was the boyishly charming but undeniably rugged star of such action and drama films as "Deliverance" (1972), "The Longest Yard" (1975), "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977), "The Cannonball Run" (1981) and "Boogie Nights" (1997).
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