Burt Reynolds, actor HARDtalk

It is time now for HARDtalk with Burt Reynolds.

Welcome to HARDtalk make. He was one of America's best-known actors. A

top box office draw with hit movies including Deliverance and Boogie

Nights. He turns 80 in 2016, but as he looks back on his career, why

does he say that although he's made more than 100 films, he's only proud

of a handful of them? Welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. You

were brought up in Florida. You wanted to become a football player.

What changed your mind? Money helped. Many accidents and things

that happened. They weren't... One terrible car accident, where eye

almost died. -- I. They did not have the jaws of life then. It took

forever to get me out of the wreck of a new it car that my father had.

-- Buick. They finally got me out and eye was in bad, bad shape. -- I.

You have to have your spleen removed. That stock your ambitions

to become a football player. That curtailed everything. I was feeling

great when they got me out. Then Eickhoff and blood came out of my

mouth. -- I coughed. I got in the ambulance. I was... There was a kid

in there that I liked very much. Tommy Price was his name. I said,

would you pray for me? Because I don't know how. He said, "yes".

Thank God somebody was listening because I came out of that. You

dropped out of Florida State University and you went to New

York. This was in the 1950s. You joined a playhouse and trained to

become an actor. But your father, a tough police chief, he did not think

acting was a proper, series career, did he? -- serious. Even when I was

making a serious living, he said, does that man worked, or is he in

your profession? -- work. He was... You thought it was a sissy thing to

do, you know? Did it hurt your confidence? He came around. But he

was in his 90s when he finally came around. Because he died at 95 in

2002. You had a tough childhood with him. He carried out corporal

punishment. He did. It was all very kosher in America for a father to

hit his son with a belt. And... But, belt was larger than any other belt

that I saw. He was a big, strong man. 6"2. In a couple of places I

still have indentations of the police department on the. Greedier.

-- on me. -- Oh dear. You are a quarter native American. The you see

yourself as a white actor? I am very proud of that. That I was able to

play roles with dignity when I did have an Indian part. I had a lot of

them. I thought that I had my head up and placed them well. In one

film, Sam Whiskey. You changed the words because you found them

insulting to native American. Yes, I did. -- Americans. What were they?

They were all sorts of nicknames for Indian that had no dignity to them,

no class. -- Indian. It hurts your feelings when someone says something

to you that takes all your dignity away. When that person is somebody

that you respect, it hurts a lot. And I respected a lot of guys that

has no... They had no feelings toward me. You acted in a lot of, if

I can put it this way, undemanding Western films. The native Americans

were always the baddies that had to be defeated and so on. How did you

square that with the fact you were a quarter of native American yourself?

I had no problem with it. When I did those parts where they had Indians,

I was the first one to speak up to the director and the producer and

say, you have to change these things because it is not right, the way we

are talking about them. But, when some new guy came along and said

something, I spoke up, and said to him, "Don't say that". He said, "It

is in the script". I said, not any more. Is Hollywood racist? Gazidis.

Still? -- Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Yes, because they don't have... The

blacks had heroes, like Martin Luther King. They were wonderful

spokesmen. But the Indians had nothing like that. It was tough for

them to get up and speak. Almost impossible. Because, number one,

they are so shy. They do not have it in their vocabulary. So, I was

very... I was very touched when they asked me to speak for them. And

idea, speak for them. -- And I did. You really have to have the right to

speak. You have to be an Indian. I'm not an Indian. I'm proud of my

heritage, but I find the other part of it... I get quite angry about it.

Venue became an actor, a very popular actor. -- Then you. By the

1970s and 1980s, you were a massive, massive star. You appeared

on Gunsmoke. Smokey and the Bandit was huge. Yet, some of your films

failed to capture the audience, like Paternity. What went wrong for you?

I was number one at the box office for five years. That had never been

done before. Not for five years in a row. I am very proud of that. After

that, the law of averages comes into play. If a guy is playing baseball

and he is hitting 500, he is a big star, but, if he does that for five

years and all of a sudden he is batting 300, nobody jumps all over

him. Even if he had those are the years. I had those years. -- other

years. But you don't get credit for that. When I go to heaven, I hope

God is part Indian. (LAUGHING). But then your careers

revived again in 1996 with the film Boogie Nights when you acted as a

porn film director. But you were absolutely devastated that he did

not win an Oscar. For that film. No, no, no, that is not true. But you

were hoping to win it. Of course. But they also thought, how ironic

that I hated the subject matter, and when I did do it, it had this

incredible reaction. I had this incredible reaction to the character

that are played. So, I felt betrayed in some ways. -- I played. I felt

betrayed in some ways that the audience that I had worked so hard

to get did not the irony of it all, that he I was, doing these films

that were comedies and whatever that made much money for the studios. --

that here I was. That, along came the time when you cannot expect to

hit it out of the park with everything. And, during that period,

I expected a little loyalty. No. In the memoirs, which you have just

published, called But, Enough of Me.... You said, I have made over

100 films that I am only proud about around five of them. You talk about

challenging yourself as an actor. That is true. I wanted to challenge

myself but nobody was giving me those parts. I was making them, the

studios and producers, a lot of money, by doing whatever they call

those pictures I did. So, if I fought them and said, I won't do

this part because it is silly and it doesn't have a message, I would

have... I would have been in big trouble. You have said that you were

offered the part that Richard dear took in pretty woman alongside Julia

Roberts. -- Richard Gere. It was even broached that you may be James

Bond when Sean Connery did not want to do the part. Perhaps it was your

fault that you did not take these great roles. I pass it up to

stupidity. I was really stupid. Eyes and an American could not play it.

But I probably could have. -- I said an. I messed up. It wasn't for me.

And, all my good friends said, you are really stupid, and I agreed. It

was stupidity. I have to put it to you, Burt Reynolds, that in 1972

when you post naked for the centrefold in Cosmopolitan Magazine.

That completely took off and everybody talked about it and the

image was reproduced in all sorts of ways, you did that willingly as the

editor of it said. I am not trying to be lofty about something as silly

as that, but, I thought, it isn't fair that we put down women for

doing that, but if a man does it, it is OK. Well, it wasn't OK. I got a

lot said to me about it. But I thought it was time that somebody of

the male persuasion did it in a magazine and set it up and had a lot

of fun. And ID and. I had a lot of fun. -- And I did. I am not crazy

about going to a party and having them Jamie a centrefold and saying,

would you sign it? -- showing me. I just say, no, I won't. You carry

that around all the time, do you? It was an iconic image of you lying

on your side with just your hand protecting a modesty. Which are not

small. It made me happy. You did not make any money out of it, did you?

That is a regret, because you talk about the fact a lot of actors do

not have control over their image, the tough studio contracts we have

seen in the past. Do you feel we are celebrating actors and yet there is

a lot of exploitation that goes on? Yes, I feel that. Sean Connery has

handled his career brilliantly, but he is a little angry about the way

it was handled and he never got the big bucks from Bond. That is one of

the reasons I turned it down. After a certain period, you think, I am

not going to do it any more. As you look back, you say there are times

where you say you do not hold grudges, but people kicked you when

you were down, but you do not want to get even with them. No. You have

had some very low moments. You did not make the money you could have

the in Cosmopolitan. In the mid-19 90s, the mid-19 90s comedy were

declared bankrupt. That was one of the points in your life? I was

bankrupt. I had a hell of a good time spending the money. It did not

take me long to come back from the depth of financial poverty to making

a lot of money. It is a crazy business. You talk to somebody and

they say, you were a bankrupt, but in 2000, you were making $3 million.

That is not bad. So you bounced back again. I fought my way back and did

very well. But there are some things for which you have paid a heavy

price which you can't bounce back from in your career. You were so

applauded for carry out your own stunts during your career and you

are now really feeling that. You say, for instance, you broke your

tailbone during deliverance. You say, my backache, that is

deliverance. You have pains that you contribute to your various films. My

entire body is a route map to all my injuries and stunts that I did in

some macho stupidity moment, I said, I can do that. I paid for it. I am

paying for it now. But if you asked me to do it over again, I would

probably do it. I loved going through the waterfall. There was

such a euphoria. You know. And your news, your shoulders. And when you

are starting with Clint Eastwood in one film, there was an iron chair.

When I was fighting, he was a stuntman, he picked up the wrong

chair. The chair was not breakable. We had a breakable chat. This was

the real deal. He hits me across the face with it. Broke all the bones up

here. I never quite got over it. It still hurts me. And it affected how

you could eat. I could not eat anything, I could not chew. The

thought of a stake was so thrilling for me, but I could not eat it. So I

had to have the juice of the state. As a result of that, you lost a lot

of weight for various reasons. In the mid-19 80s there was a rumour

that you might be suffering from HIV/Aids. When Sally Field, who is

no longer with you then, was asked whether you were suffering from

aids, her response was, I do not think he is. But there's always

something going on a roundabout. I heard that she said that. I was very

heart by it. I did not know what she meant. It was not good. What do you

think she might have meant? I think she meant I was crazy and loved life

and had a lot of girlfriends. One of them might have had aids. But it is

not true. I did not have aids. I was losing all of this week because I

could not even chew. You cannot gain weight from pudding. I guess you

can. It was a rough time for me. You stopped the pain with morphine and

other prescription painkillers to the extent that you became addicted

to prescription pills and had to go to drug rehabilitation. Drug abuse,

obviously not illicit drugs in your case, is that part and parcel of the

Hollywood scene? I am not going to take the rap for Hollywood. They

would not take the rap for me. If you get hurt as badly as I was, you

cannot eat, so somebody gives you a pill and the pain goes away, you go,

will be. You will just have a lot of them. It made me happy. I was also

just a piece of crap in terms of a father, a husband, any of those

things, to take responsibility. I love my family more than life. That

is your son, who you adopted when you married to a second wife. He is

amazing. He is an editor and now. He edits one of my films. I just adore

him. You are approaching your 80th birthday and you have said you look

back on your career that teaching is now the most important thing in your

professional life, because you teach young actors. You would take being a

good teacher over being a good actor. Is that what you hope your

legacy would be? I do feel that way. Teaching is like directing. You are

in control and you have some young people who are dependent upon you. I

have been very proud of the students I have taught. They are great kids.

One lady is in her 80s. I call her a kid. She makes me happy. What I

teach in my classes is not to act, but to let them catch your act. You

cannot catch them acting. You say you are not bitter. And that you

hate self pity. I do. Argue a happy person? Until I sat down with you, I

was really happy. But Reynolds, let us end it for you. Thank you very

much for coming on HARDtalk. You are welcome.