Symbol of a pop – dubious – culture that wrote its own history in American cinema, Bart Reynolds transcended his artistic career, with his wild life, his madness, his incalculable waste, but also his broad ironic subtext, brand record of his personality.

Burt Reynolds may have had the whole package for a major career in cinema, possessing some talent, being charismatic, exuberant, charming, tough, self-deprecating and an attractive craziness, but in the end he wrote too many low-level films, some of which have their interest, few good ones and one really great one, John Boorman’s famously dramatic and wild adventure “When Violence Breaks Out”. When asked why he turned to one after another, he disarmingly replied “for the money, the glory and the fun. Mainly, though, for the money.” Which he squandered on absurd pleasures and everything else imaginable. There were not a few times that he went bankrupt, even though his roosters were laying eggs. From the stars who were reminiscent of the Babylonian era of Hollywood, the golden decades of the 20s and 30s, when at parties they “played” from elephants and lions to raping girls…

Saying goodbye to us five years ago (September 6, 2018) at the age of 82, to go find another tough star of the popular subculture and his time, Charles Bronson, we were not sad because we lost a great actor, but a man who gave us he amused himself even in the worst nonsense he played. He was the one who took on himself all the taint of a maligned cinema from Hollywood itself, which measured profits from his films.

After all, everyone was stepping into his out-of-bounds wild life, living the now without tomorrow, like a drunken Indian. Hailing from Holland, England, Scotland and Ireland, to Italy and Cherokee, what else would you expect from Reynolds?

Football and injury

THE Burton Leon Reynolds Jr born February 11, 1936 in Lansing, Michigan. From 1946 his family lived in Riviera, Florida, where his father eventually became Chief of Police. As a child he showed his skills in American football, receiving many scholarship offers. He would prefer a scholarship to the University of Florida, starting to play football in 1954, showing that he could have a brilliant career in the sport. However, a serious knee injury in his sophomore year would cut him short. The game, far more ferocious than even Bart, would give him yet another serious injury to his spleen and despite his comeback efforts, he would be forced out of the sport forever. Somewhere there will come the time of acting, when his teacher Watson Duncan pushed him to try his luck in a play of his own.

The first steps and Brando

In order to avoid summer jobs, often exhausting, he found a scholarship from the New York State Drama Award as an opportunity, without, however, having taken acting seriously, even as a job. There, he will meet Paul Newman’s later beloved wife and major actress Joan Woodward, who will help him find an agent. As Woodward had said, “I had never seen him play, but I knew him as a cute, shy, attractive boy, with a wonderful personality, who you wanted to help.” Soon, he will get a role in a Broadway play, receive positive reviews, and these will prompt him to enroll in acting classes, from which he gained a lot of knowledge. He will play alongside Charlton Easton and director John Forsythe wanted to give him a role in the film Sayonara (1957), but was eventually cut because he looked too much like star Marlon Brando!

Breaking a window, he broke into Hollywood

Reynolds, nevertheless, will listen to the advice to go to Hollywood, to find his luck in the cinema. There things were not easy and he will be forced to work from a lancer and a trucker to a dock worker. When the first opportunity presents itself, a loophole, he will dive to grab it. He was being paid $150 to walk through a glass window on live TV. Leaving behind the broken glass and all the difficulties of his young life, he will find himself in the television studios, taking on a series of roles. That was it, his wild run had begun.

Naked in the Cosmopolitan

He will play in dozens of series and even more movies, creating a tough hero character, with huge commercial success, especially in America. For years, Reynolds would be Hollywood’s most commercial actor and would be everywhere: On TV, in the movies, in commercials, in the tabloids – even naked in Cosmopolitan…

Living his legend

All this brought tremendous income, and Reynolds will start living his legend very early on, buying expensive mansions, private jets, dozens of exotic cars, even more horses, $100,000 worth of wigs. He lived like Croesus, but also like Don Juan, conquering the hearts of many women. Although he was married only twice, which did not last long, to the actresses Judy Karn (1963-1965) and Lonnie Anderson (1988-1994), he will enter into several relationships, the most famous of which was the one with the Oscar-winning actress Sally Field.

When Violence Breaks Out

Burt Reynolds made his name from TV series and movies of second-rate westerns, adventures, detectives and comedies, but he will associate his name with one of the most important films of the 70s. The famous dramatic thriller “When Violence Breaks Out”, which was made in 1972 by the excellent British director John Boorman, putting next to Reynolds the excellent Jon Voight and Ned Beatty. The film shocked the audience in its time, for its ferocity, suspense, the prominence of wild nature and its structure, but mainly for its message, the relationship between man and nature, the nightmarish interconnection of modern civilization with the environmental destruction, the arrogance of man.

Once upon a time in Hollywood

Among the few good and interesting films he will make are the dramatic detective adventure of Robert Aldrich “The Cop and the Call Girl”with Catherine Deneuve, Alan Pakula’s comedy “Between Two Women” with Jill Clayburgh, Blake Edwards’ romantic comedy “A Man for All Women”, with Julie Andrews, Stanley Donen’s comedy “Lucky Lady”with Liza Minnelli and Gene Hackman and the spaghetti western “Navajo Joe” by Sergio Corbucci. In 1997 he will make his last major appearance in the dramatic film by Paul Thomas Anderson “Wild nights”which will win several awards and ultimately lose the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, while the previous year he was excellent in the commercial and mediocre “Striptease”, self-deprecatingly portraying a corrupt businessman and politician, with Demi Moore by his side.

On September 6, 2018, the heart that has been tormenting him for years will finally betray him and take away the joy of acting in Tarantino’s film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, a story more or less inspired by the life of Burt Reynolds.