Happy 75th Birthday Burt Reynolds

Burton ‘Burt’ Leon Reynolds, Jr. was born on February 11, 1936 in Waycross, Georgia. An all-state football player in high school, Burt attended Florida State University on a scholarship. Before his first game he was injured in a car accident and worsened the injury later that year. With Burt’s football career over he continued taking classes at Palm Beach Jr. College and became interested in acting. He won the 1956 state drama award for his role in “Outward Bound”. He met Joanne Woodward who took an interest in him and found him an agent. Burt went to New York and began a stage career in “Look, We’ve Come Through” and then starred alongside Darren McGavin in the TV series “Riverboat” (1960-1961). Reynolds then landed a supporting role in “Gunsmoke” (1962-1965) as the half-breed blacksmith Quint Asper. Encouraged by his friend Clint Eastwood he accepted a role in a Spaghetti western “Navajo Joe” in 1966 directed by Sergio Corbucci. Reynolds would go on to also appear in 1969's “100 Rifles” with Raquel Welch and Jim Brown. Burt returned to the U.S. and became a huge star in the 1970s and 1980s appearing in a number of action films such as “Deliverance” (1972), “The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing” (1973), “The Longest Yard” (1974), the “Smokey and the Bandit” films. In the 1990s he starred in the highly successful TV series “Evening Shade” for which he won an Emmy Award as Best Actor in 1991. After a messy divorce from second wife Loni Anderson [1945- ] he filed bankruptcy. In the mid-1990s he started a comeback with his performance in “Striptease” (1996) and “Boogie Nights” (1997). Burt underwent heart surgery in early 2010 and though he’s recovered his career has come to a standstill. Today we celebrate Burt Reynolds 75th birthday.