presents WORDS PORTRAITS Nick de Semlyen Steve Schofi eld EMPIRE HEADS TO THE FLORIDA ESTATE OF BURT REYNOLDS TO SPEND AN ALL-ACCESS WEEKEND WITH THE BANDIT HIMSELF, ONCE THE BIGGEST MOVIE STAR ON THE PLANET TYPE Jordan Metcalf 120 JANUARY 2016 JANUARY 2016 121 Most character-building of all, he shared a New York apartment with Rip Torn. “He was wild,” Reynolds says of the notoriously volatile Men In Black star. “One time they asked me to go duck- hunting in the Roosevelt Game Reserve for (TV show) The American Sportsman, and I took Rip with me. While we were walking around, some geese fl ew above us, squawking. Rip goes, ‘You know what “IF I’D SAID YES TO STAR they’re saying? They’re saying, “That’s the crazy Rip Torn down there.”’ He took his gun, said, ‘I’ll teach that sonuvabitch WARS, IT WOULD HAVE to talk like that,’ and shot one. I said, ‘Rip, you really are crazy.’ But I couldn’t help but love him. Still do.” Reynolds built a reputation as HIS REFRESHMENTS ARE LAID OUT. MEANT NO SMOKEY a fearless man of action, stoked by his A cluster of grapes, a glass of ice water eagerness to do his own stunts. “The and a bowl of Veggie Straws potato fi rst one involved me going through chips (‘Zesty Ranch’ fl avour), arranged AND THE BANDIT…” a plate-glass window on a show called lovingly on a side-table. Frontiers Of Faith,” he says. “I got 125 The students are assembled. This bucks — a nice chunk of change in 1957.” Friday night, 18 of them have come. They On NBC series Riverboat, he’d ask the include a retired Las Vegas cop, a local writers to add dangerous gags to the real-estate agent, and an actress who scripts. He felt more confi dent leaping once played a nurse in an episode of o a building than saying his lines. Miami Vice. All here for the same reason: Then, in 1971, along came the perfect to learn from the man they sometimes fi lm. John Boorman had tried to cast call “the master”, sometimes “Mr. R”. Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson in And fi nally, he enters. He was once Deliverance, the tale of four city boys on the biggest movie star in the world, an ill-fated canoeing trip, but retreated partying with the Rat Pack, romancing when they asked for $500,000 each. He scores of Hollywood starlets, trashing could, however, a ord Jon Voight and an M1’s worth of automobiles. Now 79 the more or less unknown Reynolds, years old, he may appear frail, moving who even looked strikingly like a young with the aid of a walking stick and Brando. Together with Ned Beatty and wearing red-tinted spectacles, but that Ronny Cox, the pair headed to the magnifi cent moustache still commands Chattooga River in Georgia — 50 miles attention. The room erupts in applause of white-water hell — for what would as he walks to his special seat. Then be a gruelling shoot, beset by wipeouts, a hush takes over, pupils awaiting his injuries and near-drownings. opening address. “Holy cow,” says Burt takes at least a year to do; some never the inner circle, joins veteran Rhonda heard this scream. I said, ‘What’s the words in, he said, ‘You got the main part.’” “Deliverance took 14 weeks to make, Burt Reynolds, Top: Reynolds and Reynolds, stretching out his legs. “I’ve make it through. A man in his twenties to take on a scene from Neil Simon’s The matter?’ She said, ‘They’re going to give That part was Tom Prior, in Sutton longer than most fi lms,” Reynolds says, photographed Empire’s Nick de been working all day and I am wiped.” writes every month from Australia, Gingerbread Lady. “That was real nice, me a million dollars for Cleopatra!’ At Vane’s Outward Bound, a sort of proto- “but it created a great bond between exclusively for Empire Semlyen assess the These are the hallowed halls of imploring the Institute for a spot. kids,” Reynolds tells them. “Real nice. the time, nobody got a million dollars, Lost in which guests on a luxury liner us. It was a skeleton crew, and I got to at the Burt Reynolds students’ best efforts. the Burt Reynolds Institute For Film Empire’s visit, meanwhile, marks the Last time one of you was ahead of the especially a woman. I was so proud of realise they’re dead. As the alcoholic Tom, learn so much about what goes into Institute for Film & Above: The Hollywood & Theatre. The name suggests a vast fi rst time a media outlet has been invited other. Today you were together. It makes her.” He lets loose one of his famous Reynolds stormed the Mirror Ballroom directing. John Boorman is still the Theatre, Florida, on legend offers some hippodrome, perhaps with a racetrack to sit in. Rather than be thrust onto the such a di erence.” There’s a dramatic chuckles. “I said, ‘That’s great. But if with a tour de force performance that best I’ve ever worked for.” October 2, 2015. sage advice. around the back for practising car-fl ips. stage to tackle some Chekhov, we’re pause, before the master delivers his you’re getting all that money, I get to bagged him the Florida State Drama He still winces when recalling the The truth is slightly less grand. Attendees ushered to a front-row chair beside verdict. “Tracy... welcome to class.” jump in the tub with you...’” Award. “I still remember being up there,” day he cracked his coccyx on a rock. “The drive to the town hall in Lake Park, Mr. R. From there, we watch for 90 Reynolds has spent the day in a he says, gazing at the stage. “I wasn’t tailbone thing was real bad,” he says. Florida, and head to the second fl oor, minutes as nervous thesps strut their sound booth, recording the audiobook nervous at all. I’d been dragged to “They’d tried throwing a dummy over passing the Community Redevelopment stu for the Smokey And The Bandit star. of his new memoir But Enough About IT WAS IN THIS VERY Watson’s class, a black sheep sitting at the waterfall. I looked at the rushes and Agency, the Commission Chambers and Anya and Beverly adopt Cockney Me, and he wasn’t joking about being room, back in 1955, that Reynolds began the back like all jocks do, but I slowly said, ‘It looks ridiculous. I can do better other municipal bureaux to slow the accents to perform a scene from Philip wiped. But now and again he drops an his ascent. A stocky 19-year-old, he’d started moving forward. He was beyond than that.’ So I went over myself and pulse. There, inside the Mirror Ballroom, Ridley’s play Vincent River. Midway anecdote that reminds you of where become a star football player at Palm any teacher I ever had.” got mangled in the hydrofl ow. When where a mirrorball dangles from beams through, one of them stumbles on a line, he’s been. After another duo have Beach High School but had recently Reynolds had the bug, and over the I got out of hospital, I asked John, ‘How of Dade County Pine, they have their later attributing it to her new dental channelled Taylor and Burton for a piece injured his knee and was limping around next 15 years fl ung himself into every did it look?’ He said, ‘Like a dummy acting evaluated by a living legend. braces. “Y’know, it’s alright to add from Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, in a funk. His English Lit teacher, an challenge that came along. There were going over a waterfall.’” It’s not easy to get in. To be invited in a line about your braces,” advises he nonchalantly declares, “I remember ebullient eccentric named Watson B. guest-spots on The Twilight Zone and Oozing with backwoods menace, into the $40-a-session masterclass, you Reynolds. “I do it all the time, and get when Elizabeth was at my house.” Duncan III, suggested he audition for Flipper, stints on Gunsmoke and Hawk, Deliverance was a huge box-o ce hit, must prove yourself in ‘Fundamentals’, accused of it. If they want to take it That hush descends on the room the school play. “He tricked me,” smiles and movies like Armored Command and the one Reynolds had been waiting for. a course focusing on character out, they can. Truth is what we want.” once more. “She was in the bathtub,” Reynolds, after wrapping up the class. “I Navajo Joe. Between jobs, he worked as Suddenly, he was on the A-list. And development and body language. This Tracy, who is auditioning to join Reynolds continues, “and I suddenly started reading the page he gave me. Four a truck driver, bouncer and dockworker. he’d only climb higher. H 122 JANUARY 2016 JANUARY 2016 123 A life in pictures I think he was proud of me, but he never rumour started going around that I had A SHORT DRIVE UP US 1 (top to bottom): said so. It was hard for me.” For another, AIDS. I lost a lot of people that I thought from the Institute is Burt Reynolds’ Deliverance (1972); there was his break-up with Field, whom were friends. But on a positive note mansion. Empire visits the next afternoon, Smokey And The he still considers the love of his life.