Reynolds’ Rap

Friday, July 5, 2002 | 3:29 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: July 7, 2002

Thirty years have passed since Burt Reynolds appeared nude (with a prudently placed cowboy hat), in Cosmopolitan magazine.

The 66-year-old actor bares a different conception of himself in a one-man show Thursday through next Sunday at The Orleans Showroom.

"Burt Reynolds: The Laughs, The Loves, The Lies, The Legends, The Lies (Not Necessarily in that Order)," is a journey through a life whose onscreen and offscreen images sometimes were blurred.

Reynolds' sensational private life sometimes overshadowed many of his career accomplishments.

In 1984 Reynolds broke his jaw while filming "City Heat" and lost more than 100 pounds, which ignited rumors that he had AIDS.

Reynolds' love life often has been fodder for the tabloids -- including his relationships with Dinah Shore (19 years his senior) and Sally Field (10 years his junior) and his messy divorce from actress Loni Anderson (in 1993).

Through bankruptcy, a library full of bad films and a reputation as a playboy, the affable actor has survived. His popularity with the public is still largely intact.

Many of Reynolds' earlier films, such as "Deliverance" (1972), "Smoky and the Bandit" (1977) and "Hooper"(1978), were huge successes.

Some were little gems, such as "The End" (1978), a comedy about a man with a terminal illness, and "Starting Over" (1979), in which Reynolds portrayed a divorced man trying to rebuild his life.

Through 45 years as an actor, Reynolds has crossed paths with many legendary performers. His list of friends reads like a membership roster of the Screen Actors Guild.

During a recent telephone interview with the Las Vegas Sun from his office in Jupiter, Fla., Reynolds discussed his upcoming show and a career that soared, crashed and burned, and has risen out of the ashes -- though maybe not to the same heights:

Las Vegas Sun: Are you going to bare your soul onstage?

Burt Reynolds: Other people have bared it enough that I don't need it bared anymore. They should just put me in a jar at Harvard or something. This is not a kiss-and-tell thing. I think it's fun, and if I have a good time, the audience seems to have a good time. So far, I've had a ball.

Sun: Tell us about the show.

BR: The show's not about me, it's about the people I've met that I think people are very curious about. Over the years I accumulated all these stories. A lot of people who I have tremendous respect for in this business told me I should put them together and create a show.

Sun: How long have you been doing the act?

BR: I first did it in a theater about four years ago. It was very successful. As time went by, I started to get braver and thought maybe I could do it in casinos. Gradually, I worked my way up to Atlantic City, which was a test. It seemed to go over great there. (The performance in Las Vegas) will be the Wayne Newton test.

Sun: Where else have you toured?

BR: I did a tour all around the South, then I went up as far as Chicago. Then, I started going West, as far as Palm Springs.

When I did Palm Springs, my friend (comedian) Shecky Greene picked me up at the airport. He says, "All right, you've got to have a piano player. You can't go onstage without a piano player." I said, "Shecky, I wouldn't know what to do with a piano player." Shecky's forcing me to go out there and sit next to a guy at the piano. The night is over, I go backstage and there's Shecky. I said, "Have you got any notes for me?" He said, "Yeah. Fire the piano player."

Sun: You're a close friend of one of the greatest comedians of all time, Johnny Carson.

BR: I miss Johnny desperately. I did over 100 of "The Tonight Shows." That was the best training ground in the world to perform in front of a live audience. I was the first actor, the first non-comedian, to ever host the show. I hosted it about 30 times.

Sun: Your career has survived some bad times.

BR: You have to reinvent yourself, especially in our business. I expected to roll off the top of the mountain eventually, but I didn't know I was going to crash. "Boogie Nights" (1997) totally turned things around for me. It revived my career.

Sun: You've made some great films and some that weren't so great. In retrospect, would you have made different choices?

BR: Yeah, I would. But, if you start looking at the numbers, at all the Trans Ams I sold, I don't know. The only thing I'd do over is I would buy stock in Pontiac.

Yeah, I'd do things a lot different. But I'm not sure that would have made any difference, in terms of being a leading man (at my age). The only guys that have been able to do that were those guys in the other era, Gary Cooper and those guys. Clint Eastwood has done it. He's amazing. We are very close. He was kidding me when I had a son (in 1988). He said, "You're going to be on a walker when your son graduates from high school." When he had his little girl -- he's 71 -- I said, "Yeah, I'll be on a walker, but you'll be in a coma when she's in junior high."

Sun: "Starting Over" was a nice little film, but it went against your stereotype. How did you come to do the movie?

BR: It was one of my favorites. I was No. 1 at the box office at the time and they absolutely didn't want me to do the film. They said there's no way I could play a guy who was shy and having a hard time figuring out how to get a date. I said, "But that's who I am. That other guy, the jerk everybody has me play all the time, that's another jacket in the closet, but it's not me." I said I'd even test for it. So I tested for it, and I did the film. It was a wonderful film. It was Candice Bergen's first comedy, and she got an Oscar nomination. Jill (Clayburgh) also got a nomination. I was very, very proud of the work.

Sun: As you've grown older, has your life changed dramatically?

BR: It has radically changed. I live in this little town (Jupiter, Fla.) that is jock heaven -- Jack Nicklaus, Joe Namath, Phil Simms, Joe Theismann, Lee Trevino, the Shark (Greg Norman) live here. This is why I don't play golf.

But what's really funny, I'm driving around and I see Namath on his way to his girls' track meet -- he has two daughters. I'm looking at this guy who wrote a book called "I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow ... 'Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day." He's driving with two girls, one with an ice cream cone stuck to the window, and he's trying to figure out how to get to the PTA meeting. That's what happens to you down here. There's nothing wrong with that. It's great.

Sun: What drove you, as a young actor?

BR: At first I wasn't interested in acting. I didn't know anything about the art. I started out doing stunts in the days of live televison. My roommate was Rip Torn, a hell of a good actor. He'd get a part and they would be looking for a guy to set on fire and throw through a window. Rip would say he had the perfect guy. So they would set me on fire and give me $400. I thought this was heaven. My dad was only making $100, and he was chief of police (in Riviera Beach, Fla.).

Sun: Who were some of your mentors?

BR: I had a bunch of adoptive fathers. Robert Mitchum. Lee Marvin. I had a great time with Lee. He gave me my first acting job. It was on his series, "M Squad."

One night, Lee was absolutely blasted. I said, "Come on Lee. I've got to take you home or your wife's going to kill you." We go out and he climbs on top of my car. I said, "Lee, get off the car." He said, "No. I want to feel the breeze." So I'm driving 12 miles an hour down Santa Monica Boulevard and a highway patrol trooper pulls up beside us and says, "Good evening, Mr. Marvin." I thought, "I guess they see him a lot on top of cars." It wasn't a big surprise for them.

Sun: Have you been to Las Vegas before?

BR: Yeah. When I went the first time I saw Danny Thomas, who basically came out and told stories. He was from that great era of vaudeville, like Jack Benny and all those guys. They had nine billion stories, but Danny Thomas made them his own. The best (storyteller) of my generation, Bill Cosby, was one of the guys who said I should do this. I said, "That's great. I can come out and sit in a rocker." He said, "No, You can't sit in a rocker. I sit in a rocker."

But that's basically what the show is. It's telling a whole bunch of stories about people who, hopefully, a lot of people love.

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