Burt Reynolds

Burt Reynolds was an American actor whose 60-year acting career across film, TV, and Broadway produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly his 1970s peak comprising Deliverance (1972), The Longest Yard (1974), and Smokey and the Bandit (1977). He was born Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. on February 11, 1936, in Lansing, Michigan. His father Burton Milo Reynolds Sr. was a U.S. Army veteran and Riviera Beach, Florida police chief, and his mother Harriet Fernette Miller was a homemaker. The family relocated to Riviera Beach, Florida, when he was ten.

His Florida State University football career across 1954–1956 — as a halfback under coach Tom Nugent — was curtailed by his 1955 knee injury and 1956 second-vehicle accident. The 1956 athletic-career conclusion launched his pivot to acting at the Florida State University Theatre Department under coach Watson B. Duncan III. His 1959 New York City arrival and his 1961 Broadway debut in the original cast of Look, We've Come Through launched his early career.

His 1960s American TV career included his three-year lead role as half-Cherokee blacksmith Quint Asper on CBS's Gunsmoke (1962–1965) and his lead role on ABC's detective TV series Hawk (1966) and his lead role on NBC's Dan August (1970–1971). His 1972 lead role as Lewis Medlock in John Boorman's Deliverance — the four-canoeist Georgia-river survival drama opposite Jon Voight — produced his film breakthrough.

His 1977 lead role as Bo "Bandit" Darville in Hal Needham's Smokey and the Bandit — the Trans Am car-chase comedy opposite Sally Field and Jackie Gleason — grossed $300 million worldwide on a $4 million budget and launched the 1977–1983 Smokey and the Bandit film series. His subsequent late-1970s and 1980s peak produced Hooper (1978), The Cannonball Run (1981), and Sharky's Machine (1981). His 1997 career-renaissance role as porn-film director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights earned him the 1997 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. He died on September 6, 2018, at age 82, in Jupiter, Florida, of a heart attack.

His name Burt began as a short form of Burton (an Old English place-name meaning "fortified settlement"). Burt was a popular American boys' name through the 1930s and 1940s.