Burt Reynolds
Burt Leon Reynolds, Jr. is an American actor. He is one of America's most recognizable film and television personalities with more than 90 feature film and 300 television episode credits.
It's not at all that amazing how anyone's background, family, environment, and just all around circumstances affects and influences what one "grows up to be." Burt Reynolds is no exception.
The following is a quick synopsis of just that. From Reynolds' family, his many relocations of home, "stunt pranks" early in school, athletic skills, accidents causing physical harm (which led to his eventual drama studies) - all this in his formative years up to being a young adult. All these experiences helped form him into the man and actor he became.
Young Reynolds, and his family, moved a lot due his father being in the military (Army). Upon his father being discharged and becoming a contractor, they settled in Florida and active Reynolds loved it (quite a contrast from his birth home of Lansing, Michigan).
The small school Reynolds was in, in the seventh grade, needed to move that class of students to a bigger school, Reynolds was moved. He felt lost at the big school, so he started hanging out with greasers and skipping school. He also began showing off with dangerous stunts, such as diving off the top of a raised drawbridge, and jumping from an airboat onto the back of a running deer.
After graduating from Palm Beach High School in West Palm Beach, Florida, Reynolds attended Florida State University on a college football scholarship, becoming an all-star halfback. While at Florida State, Reynolds joined the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, the football team's fraternity of choice.
Reynolds was anticipating a very good season his second year, with expectations of being named to All American teams, and an eventual career in professional football. In the first game of the season Reynolds tore the cartilage in his knee. He made the injury worse by trying to play again later in the game, and then again in a couple of games late in the season.
On Christmas break that year, Reynolds ran his father's car up under a flatbed trailer that was sitting across a dark street. The car was wedged under the trailer, and it took rescuers seven and a half hours to remove Reynolds from the wreckage. He had multiple injuries, including his knee, shoulder, some broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen, the last of which was removed in emergency surgery.
In order to keep up with his studies he began taking classes at Palm Beach Junior College (PBJC) in neighboring Lake Worth, Florida. In his first term at PBJC Reynolds was in a class taught by Watson B. Duncan III. Duncan pushed Reynolds into trying out for a play he was producing, Outward Bound.
He cast Reynolds in the lead, based on his impressions from listening to Reynolds read Shakespeare in class. Reynolds won the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance in Outward Bound.
The Florida State Drama Award included a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse, a summer stock theater, in Hyde Park, New York. Reynolds saw the opportunity as an agreeable alternative to more physically demanding summer jobs, but did not yet see acting as a career. But none-the-less Reynolds continued to study acting and pursued numerous plays. He made his Broadway debut in Look, We've Come Through.
Reynolds' film debut was in 1961, in the movie Angel Baby. At the urging of friend Clint Eastwood, Reynolds used his TV fame to secure leading roles in overseas low budget films, commonly called "Spaghetti Westerns". (Eastwood advised Reynolds from experience, as he had done the same). Reynolds first Spaghetti Western, Navajo Joe, came out in 1966. These low budget starring roles established Reynolds as a bankable leading man in movies, and earned him starring roles in American big-budget motion pictures. His breakout performance in Deliverance in 1972 made him a star!
When asked about his movies,
My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave."
Burt Reynolds
Television and film projects continue to present day, with A Bunch of Amatuers and Not Another Not Another Movie, both in 2009 and 2010 projects in pre-production. Reynolds has had (might still be operated under his name) an acting school in Florida. In 1978 his star was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Reynolds has numerous awards earned thoughout his long acting career - Burt Reynolds' Awards & Achievements.
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