It proved I could act, not only to the public but me.”
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“I don’t know if it’s the best acting I’ve done, but it’s the best movie I’ve ever been in. “If I had to put only one of my movies in a time capsule, it would be Deliverance,” Reynolds wrote. It lost out to The Godfather in the best picture battle. “I asked how looked, and he said, ‘Like a dummy going over the falls,'” Reynolds wrote.ĭeliverance, infamous for its uncut 10-minute hillbilly male rape scene (“squeal like a pig”), was nominated for three Academy Awards but came away empty. He climbed into the canoe, was sent crashing into the rocks and ended up in the hospital. When Reynolds saw test footage of a dummy in a canoe going over the falls in one scene, he told Boorman the scene looked fake. “When I asked John why, he said, ‘In case one of you drowns,'” Reynolds wrote. Filmed by Vilmos Zsigmond along the Chattooga River near the Georgia-South Carolina border, it was an arduous production that Boorman shot in sequence. In John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), based on a book by James Dickey, Reynolds starred as macho survivalist Lewis Medlock, one of four guys from Atlanta who head to the wilderness for the weekend.
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McMurphy (another Nicholson Oscar-winning turn) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “backed away” from playing Batman on TV in the 1960s and declined the part made famous by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Reynolds also indicated he was Milos Forman’s first choice to play R.P. By the time I finally woke up and tried to get it right, nobody would give me a chance.” “As a result, I missed a lot of opportunities to show I could play serious roles. I was interested in having a good time,” Reynolds recalled in his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me. “I didn’t open myself to new writers or risky parts because I wasn’t interested in challenging myself as an actor.
(He went on to win a Golden Globe but lost out in the Oscar supporting actor race to Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting, a bitter disappointment for him.) The first time he saw himself in Boogie Nights, he was so unhappy he fired his agent. Though beloved by audiences for his brand of frivolous, good-ol’-boy fare, the playful Reynolds rarely was embraced by critics.
The cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest.Īlways with a wink, Reynolds shined in many action films (often doing his own stunts) and in such romantic comedies as Starting Over (1979) opposite Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) with Dolly Parton Best Friends (1982) with Goldie Hawn and, quite aptly, The Man Who Loved Women (1983) with Julie Andrews.