Burt Reynolds, sex symbol of the 1970s silver screen, has died
Asked once to write his own epitaph, he said: ‘He lived a hell of a life, and did his best — his very best — not to hurt anybody’
Burt Reynolds, whose good looks and charm made him one of Hollywood’s most popular actors, died on Thursday at the age of 82. At the peak of his career, Reynolds — who starred in films such as Deliverance, The Longest Yard, and Smokey and the Bandit in the 1970s and ’80s — was one of the most bankable actors in the film industry, reeling off a series of box office smashes until a career downturn in the mid-1980s. He rebounded in 1997 with a nomination for a best supporting actor Academy Award for Boogie Nights, and won an Emmy Award for his role in the 1990-94 TV series Evening Shade. With his trademark mustache and macho aura, he was a leading male sex symbol of the 1970s. He appeared naked — reclining on a bearskin rug with his arm strategically positioned for the sake of modesty — in a centrefold in the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan in 1972. Reynolds’ personal life sometimes overshadowed his movies, with marriages that ended in divorce to actresses Loni Anderson and Judy Carne, a...
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