Burt Reynolds' life in photos

By Mark Gray 12:15pm PDT, Sep 6, 2018

On Sept. 6, Burt Reynolds passed away at the age of 82 in Florida. Multiple reports indicated he suffered a heart attack. The screen legend will leave a legacy unmatched by almost anyone. He had no shortage of memorable moments over a career that's spanned five decades. Wonderwall.com is taking a walk down memory lane to see how the "Bandit" became a household name.

Football played a huge role in Burt Reynolds' life growing up (and continued to have an impact on his career too). In high school, Burt was a stud at fullback and was named First Team All State and All Southern team while at Palm Beach High School in Florida. He ended up attending Florida State University on a football scholarship. He performed admirably on the field but was injured as a sophomore. A subsequent car wreck ended his NFL hopes. But he was invited back to FSU in 2014 to thrown the ceremonial spear into the football field, a tremendous honor. Some still refer to him as "Mr. FSU."

For a year, Burt Reynolds enjoyed minor appearances on several TV shows until his first big TV role came in 1960 when he played Ben Frazer in 20 episodes of "Riverboat." He and co-star Darren McGavin reportedly didn't get along, so Burt was eventually replaced.

Burt Reynolds was lovestruck when he met British TV actress Judy Carne. She was smitten too. The couple married in 1963. They would get divorced two years later. But that wasn't the last time that he would see his ex. In fact, in the early '70s, Burt hosted "The Tonight Show" for Johnny Carson and guess who the pre-scheduled guest was? Yep, Judy. "They had my ex-wife on. Good choice, I hadn't seen her in five years. The last time I had seen her, I was walking out the door with my rotary club football trophy," he recalled when telling the story to Johnny two decades later. "It was really interesting."

In the mid-'60s, Burt Reynolds had a home on network television starring on the Western classic "Gunsmoke" as half-Indian, half-white blacksmith Quint Asper. He lasted four seasons on a show that spanned 20 years. Fun fact: Burt left the show just before it switched from a black-and-white format to color TV.

Burt Reynolds always wanted to star in movies. After toiling in a few low-budget films, Burt had a break-out performance as Lewis Medlock in "Deliverance" in 1972. Interestingly, he told The Hollywood Reporter than he nearly drowned on the set when he filmed a scene in which his canoe went over a waterfall. "I went over the falls and the first thing that happened, I hit a rock and cracked my tailbone, and to this day it hurts," he said. "Then I went down to the water below and it was a whirlpool. I couldn't get out and [a] guy there said if you get caught, just go to the bottom… So I went down to the bottom. What he didn't tell me was it was going to shoot me up like a torpedo. So I went out." While all of us might still feel creepy about "Deliverance," Burt actually still feels the movie in a literal sense.

Perhaps Burt Reynolds got a little too big for his britches and figured he could conquer multiple avenues of entertainment. In 1973, the actor released an easy-listening album called "Ask Me What I Am." On half the album, Burt sang; on the other half, he spoke. Thankfully for Burt, not many people remember this ever happened.

By 1974, Burt Reynolds was a full-fledged star and was scoring leading roles, including one as Paul Crewe in "The Longest Yard" (Burt also starred as a different character in the 2005 remake of the movie). Burt was able to tap into his two loves: football and film. The movie was success for both the production company and Burt, as he was nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor.

Burt Reynolds is perhaps known best for his role as Bo "Bandit" Darville in "Smokey and the Bandit," which was released in 1977. The film had a huge cultural impact. Burt drove a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am in the film, spurring the car's massive popularity. Due to his fun-loving bad-boy behavior and dapper looks, Bruce became a sex symbol in popular culture. (It also helped that he'd famously posed nude as the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine in 1972.) The actor was actually given the 1977 Trans Am as a gift. The film was also the inspiration for the television show "The Dukes of Hazzard." In a 2016 interview, Burt said no one stayed on the script for the film. "I don't remember anything on that script," he said. "We just flat out ad-libbed everything… It was so much fun."

After meeting on the set of "Smokey and the Bandit," Burt Reynolds started dating his co-star and on-screen love interest, Sally Field. The duo were together for five years before splitting in the early '80s. Sally played his love interest in three more films: "Hooper," "Smokey and the Bandit II" and "The End." The two don't really speak anymore, Sally said in 2016. A year prior, he called the actress the "love of my life," even though they hadn't been together for decades. "I miss her terribly," he said. "Even now, it's hard on me. I don't know why I was so stupid. Men are like that, you know. You find the perfect person, and then you do everything you can to screw it up."

Although he acted in smash hits throughout his career, the late '70s and early '80s were really Burt Reynolds' time. Movie exhibitors voted him as the top box-office attraction in the country. Who could blame them either! Burt was the golden goose for movie studios. He was the old cliche: Men wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978.

In 1982, Burt Reynolds teamed up with his old pal Dolly Parton to film "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Like everything he touched during that time in his life, it was cinema gold. In the film, Burt showed off his vocal chops, singing "Sneaking Around" with Dolly. He said he spent more than two months working with a voice coach to perfect the song (Dolly needed no help). "I told Dolly to be brutally honest with me if I couldn't cut it," he said. "I was so comfortable with her being here and reassuring me." The film was controversial because of the title, but it was a whopping success nonetheless.

You could argue that Burt Reynolds and actress Loni Anderson were the "It" couple of the early '90s. The duo met in 1981 on "The Merv Griffin Show," but they didn't go on a date for another year. They then dated for six years before finally tying the knot in 1988. They were like American royalty: the dapper actor and the beautiful bride. But things didn't work out and the one-time A-list couple had an explosive split in 1993. Burt would go on to tell People magazine years later, "I should have known that you don't marry an actress. That was a really dumb move on my part."

The biggest stars in the world have always been friends with other big stars, and that was no different for Burt Reynolds. Among his close friends were Dom DeLuise, Tammy Wynette and Paul Newman. None, though, was closer to him than Johnny Carson. "We just had a fabulous thing going," Burt told Stephen Colbert in 2016. "[Johnny] just let me go and I was smart enough to set him up for couple of jokes and he would give me one." Burt was on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" 61 times! On his last appearance on the show in 1992, he listed all the ways that his appearances had helped his career and told Johnny, "If I've had anything in my life from show business that was good, it came from you."

One good thing came out of Burt Reynolds' marriage to Loni Anderson: a son. Now an adult, their adopted child, Quinton Reynolds, has largely avoided the limelight (he's seen here with his dad in 2004). Quinton works behind the scenes in Hollywood as a cameraman.

It had been a while since Burt Reynolds had a significant impact on television (he was more into movies), but then a show called "Evening Shade" came along in 1990. Burt played a former pro football player (told you football would be laced throughout his career!) who settled down with his family in Evening Shade, Arkansas, to coach a high school team. For four seasons, the show was a solid performer and Burt won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance. In 1994, Burt was personally told several times that the show would be renewed. Then came the old switcheroo: He found out over the phone that it was being canceled. It was a low point. "My mood is up and I'm going to do a movie and then I hope I'm going to do another movie, and in the meantime I'll talk to [TV producers]," he told Larry King afterward. "I'd be thrilled to death to come back and do something and kinda thumb my nose at some people."

In 1997, Burt Reynolds had a huge resurgence thanks to his role in "Boogie Nights," in which he played porn filmmaker Jack Horner. Burt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and he won the Golden Globe. Oddly, 18 years later in 2015, Burt revealed he'd never actually seen the movie, didn't like the subject of the movie and "hated" working with the director of the movie. "I'd done my picture with Paul Thomas Anderson, that was enough for me," he told The Guardian.

The headlines screamed something like this in 2011: Burt Reynolds is broke! The actor fell on hard times, he admitted, but he's insisted he was never broke, despite being foreclosed on. He and his company both filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1996. In 2014, memorabilia he owned was reportedly auctioned so that he could pay his bills. He sold off cars, awards, old credit cards, pictures and basically everything he had. In 2015, he told Vanity Fair, "I've lost more money than is possible because I just haven't watched it. I've still done well in terms of owning property and things like that. But I haven't been somebody who's been smart about his money." He's right.

Burt Reynolds' health has never been a cakewalk. In 1984 while filming "City Heat" with Clint Eastwood, Burt broke his jaw when he was hit with a chair. He later claimed that he developed an addiction to painkillers after that incident. In 2010, he underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery. In 2015, he alarmed many when he was photographed looking frail. In an interview with "The Jonathan Ross Show," he said the impact of his long career has been tough on his body. "I did all my own stunts, which is why I can't walk very well now," he said. "At certain times in the morning I regret it, trying to get out of bed. I can point to certain places and know it's from certain pictures."

Burt Reynolds laid all his cards on the table in 2015 when he released his memoir "But Enough About Me." In the book, he spoke of the highs and low of his career, including the times he passed on "James Bond," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Pretty Woman." He dished on his sexual exploits, how he turned down Greta Garbo, and how "rude" Marlon Brando was. He didn't hold back when he spoke about ex-wife Loni Anderson either. "The truth is, I never did like her," he wrote. "I don't remember actually asking her to marry me. There was just pressure… coming from her direction." After they split, he revealed that he received a thank you note from Princess Diana for "keeping her off the cover of People magazine."

Burt Reynolds passed away on Sept. 6, 2018. His last film was titled, "The Last Movie Star." While promoting the film, he reflected on his life to USA Today, thinking back to the fictional Cahulawassee River from "Deliverance." "The river has much to with my life, my career — you just keep going on," says Reynolds. "It's going to try and drown you and beat the (expletive) out of you and do everything else. But you just keep going on. And maybe there's a rock ahead that's going to hit you." Classic Burt. Farewell, old friend.

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