Actor Burt Reynolds Dies At 82.
ALLEN: Tributes are pouring in, right now, for Hollywood star, Burt Reynolds. He died Thursday of cardiac arrest. He was 82. Reynolds starred in many film and T.V. roles during his 60-year career, including Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, and Evening Shade. Stephanie Elam looks back at his extraordinary life and career.</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Burt Reynolds was one of the top box office draws in the 70s and 80s. But the big screen was not where he set out to be. No. The handsome, charismatic, Michigan-born actor, wanted to be a football star. Reynolds attended Florida State University on a football scholarship. But an injury derailed his athletic career and put him on the path to Hollywood stardom. At first, Reynolds landed roles on television, including shows like Gun Smoke and Flipper, but it was the 1972 film, Deliverance, that was his breakthrough role.</s>BURT REYNOLDS, ACTOR: Who has the ability to survive?</s>ELAM: He also became a sex symbol, and posed nude in Cosmopolitan magazine. He capitalized on his success in 1974 sports drama, The longest Yard.</s>REYNOLDS: I'm going to fix it, OK?</s>ELAM: By 1977, the actor who was known for his signature mustache was riding high with the success of Smokey and the Bandit, alongside Sally Field.</s>REYNOLDS: What's your handle, son?</s>ELAM: The film became a successful franchise for Reynolds. So did the movie, Cannonball Run, in 1981.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can't you do something? I mean, you're professionals.</s>REYNOLDS: This is our day off.</s>ELAM: He kept the laughs coming as the sheriff in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, co-starring Dolly Parton. Although his film career slowed down by the late 80s, Reynolds found success on television in the 1990s series Evening Shade. It ran for four seasons and earned him an Emmy and a Golden Globe. While his T.V. career was on a high, his personal life, unravelled. He ended his five-year marriage to actress, Lonnie Anderson, in1993, and was involved in a messy custody battle over their adopted son, Quinton. By 1996, Reynolds filed for bankruptcy.</s>REYNOLDS: Jack Horner, filmmaker.</s>ELAM: But things began to look up for the actor, when he landed Paul Thomas Anderson's film, Boogie Nights. The role led to his first Oscar nomination. Though he didn't win, he received critical acclaim in the hockey film, Mystery Alaska, in 1999.</s>REYNOLDS: I don't want to hear another word about a hockey game.</s>ELAM: Throughout the 2000s, he kept busy with a number of T.V. and film roles like the Dukes of Hazzard, and a career that took him from the football field to becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. The legendary actor will be remembered for decades of iconic roles in films and television. Still to many, Burt Reynolds will always be the bandit.</s>ALLEN: What a smile, what a laugh, what a -- what a guy. Let's bring in Turner Classic Movies host, Ben Mankiewicz, now. Hello, Ben. He joins us now from Los Angeles. Yes, what a loss, Ben. I mean, you just saw that smile from Burt Reynolds. He always just seemed like he was just having a good time no matter the role.</s>BEN MANKIEWICZ, HOST, TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES: Yes. I'm, you know, I'm really sad. I didn't know Burt Reynolds well. I did a couple of interviews with him, one with the cast of Deliverance at the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival a few years ago. And I did an interview that really, sort of, touched me about -- I think it was 2011, on our, sort of, road to Hollywood, we called it, before the TCM Classic Film Festival. It was at a theater in Tampa, the Tampa Theater. And there was a huge crowd there to see Burt Reynolds and the Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit was there. And we were -- we were downstairs at the theater, and he had to walk up the stairs to get to the stage. And if you know anything about, sort of, the late stages of Burt Reynolds' life, he was in chronic pain, both from having played football, as the report you just aired indicated, and also from doing many of his own stunts, including on Deliverance, where he broke his tailbone. And he was laboring up the stairs, and after we talked for a while, he said, you know, what are we going to talk about? I'm like, well, maybe, mostly Smokey and the Bandit. And then he said, you know, Ben, I've made like 80 pictures and only four of them are worth a damn. And he said it with a, sort of, an ennui. And I thought, I just felt bad for him because, one, it isn't true. And after our talk downstairs, it was just -- I was left with the impression of a -- of a guy who thought that he could have done more with his career. And, of course, he did a lot. I mean, he's the number one box office star for five years in the late 70s and early 80s.</s>ALLEN: Yes, absolutely. I wonder why he felt that. I mean, every time we turned around, Burt Reynolds was doing something. And I was struck by something he said that I read, that he said he didn't take his crap too seriously, that he was in it just having fun. You kind of got that sense from him.</s>MANKIEWICZ: I think that's -- I think what you're touching on there is actually what he meant, is that he didn't take it too seriously, and he wishes that he had taken it more -- he was trained at the actors studio. I think he thought that he could have been a more substantive star and not just a great big action star. You know, he turned down Jack Nicholson's role in Terms of Endearment. He told Milos Forman he didn't want to play the role that also went to Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He had a chance to play James Bond after Sean Connery backed out of the franchise and he, sort of, said a British guy should do it. He didn't -- again, he felt like he didn't -- I sensed that he felt like he didn't challenge himself, and I think that's too bad because as we saw, whenever he did challenge himself, when he had real great material like Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, he really delivered.</s>ALLEN: Yes. So, mainly, perhaps, he relied on what he brought to the big screen, which was sexy and cool, because he certainly had that going for him.</s>MANKIEWICZ: Oh, he had that in spades. You know, just that wink, that Burt -- nobody winked, in Hollywood, like Burt Reynolds.</s>ALLEN: I know. It's so true. It's so true. What do you think about the big thing that he did when he posed semi-nude in a women's magazine?</s>MANKIEWICZ: Well, again, that was another example of, I think -- well, I don't think, we know it. He said it. His book, by the way, that he wrote in 2015, Enough About Me, is one of the great Hollywood memoirs. But he wrote about it then. He talked about it, to me, and to other people. He regretted that enormously. He thought it would be a joke, sort of, spoofing Playboy. But, I guess, maybe we weren't ready for that joke. He said, you know, I was the only one who thought it was funny. So, he regretted it instantly, and it made people, again, presume that he wasn't a serious person. And it comes right around, Deliverance, right at the time when Hollywood and the filmmaking industry and this incredibly vibrant time for American films from 1967 to 1976, when he could have been a big part of that. And again, that decision, I think, undermined his credibility. He regretted it. He thought it was a good idea. He thought it would be seen as funny, and it wasn't, at least, not by enough people.</s>ALLEN: So, for any of the younger folks watching, what movies would you say are a must-see for Burt Reynolds?</s>MANKIEWICZ: Yes. Well, I mean, Deliverance, no question, Semi-Tough. Look, for me, I'm of the age when I was 10 years old when Star Wars came out. But the movie that I saw three or four times in 1977, wasn't Star Wars, it was Smokey and the Bandit. No question. I mean, you should see everything by Paul Thomas Anderson. But you should definitely see -- you should definitely see Boogie Nights too. But Semi-Tough, The Longest Yard, he made a lot -- Sharky's Machine, which he also directed. I love Sharky's Machine. There's a stick which is an Elmore Leonard adaptation. And you can get to 10, 12 quality Burt Reynolds movies, you know, Gator, White Lightning, they're all worth seeing.</s>ALLEN: Definitely people need to have a Burt Reynolds movie night party. That's for sure. Thanks so much, Ben. We appreciate your insights. Thank you. Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Natalie Allen. "WORLD SPORT" will start right after a break. I'll see you back here in 15 minutes.