There was also some frustration by fans with his dumping of Sally Field.
Field and Reynolds were seen as something of a sweet couple. Then the academy-award winning actress (and daughter of the legendary Jocko Mahoney) put her career somewhat on a back burner for Reynolds and even costared in a few of his car chasers.
Then the breakup came.
But this bullet only goes as far as when she asks Katharine Hepburn what kind of tree she wants to be.
He actually fired his agent over it, then gave smarmy speeches at Golden Globes and looked visibly pissed when he didn’t win the Oscar.
Another cardinal rule of Hollywood is (I’ve read) you never let bigshots know you have money problems, and with Burt the news got out. This means that they can offer you less and aren’t going to put up with any crap from you (or even legitimate gripes for that matter) and leads to being exploited. I remember when he made a cameo appearance on Golden Girls the crowd went wild with a “That really is Burt Reynolds!” ovation, but within a year he was not only on a TV show but a flopped one at that (along with Cosby and another who was in rotation in detective shows), which was also a major sign he was in decline.
The reason I stopped liking him at all (not that I was ever a huge fan) is he’s such a damned whiner. He was so obviously bitter over Hollywood turning its back on him and the fickleness of Hollywood society and seemed to blame them for his problems (Dude… did you really not notice the youth obsession when you were on top? And is it their fault that you made $50 million in a few years and squandered it? Hell, your bud Jim Nabors hasn’t had a star vehicle since Gomer Pyle went off and he’s loaded, you could have just asked him “who takes care of your money?”, but nope.) When he divorced Loni Anderson and trashed her in an interview it was a major downturn as well, though that was after the 80s.
A major reason he’s not liked down here is that I know two people he badly screwed financially. One’s a gatebuilder who did thousands and thousands of dollars worth of work to his house in Florida (multimillion dollar mansion which he was allowed to keep in bankruptcy) and Burt declared bankruptcy almost immediately upon having the job completed- there’s NO WAY he couldn’t have known he wouldn’t be able to pay for it- so the guy was out about $25,000 in labor and materials even after he salvaged what he could. I also know a bartender who’s reliable who swears Burt simply skipped out on a several-thousand dollar tab for himself and his buds one night while staying at the beach. These stories are reliable and there are many others from the places where he lives and vacations in the tri-state area.
Of course the main reason he declined was that Norm “Little Chubby” McDonald came of age and was cheaper and easier to work with.
It was commonly reported that he fired his agent after seeing the film, so dissatisfied he was with the movie.
He’s the only name actor in the large ensemble cast that didn’t contribute to the BN actor commentary track (though they mostly have nice things to say about him).
Boogie Nights was a really good movie. But like Reynolds, I didn’t like it after an initial screening.
No one has yet mentioned his precipitous hair loss and his series of bad toupees, so I will. He became an object of ridicule.
Robot Arm
LOL - Great minds think alike. 
Not to mention being covered in Vaseline.
Ok, so I guess I’m the only one who liked Sharkey’s Machine?
I liked that movie too. It was the prime motivating factor in my purchase of a hyper-expensive balisong.
Since someone brought up “Sharkey’s Machine” how about Burt’s equally popular follow-up movie “Stick”?
I have the rare distinction of having seen Malone in the theater. Twice. I haven’t thought about that for 20 years, until this thread. Some memories are best left supressed.
He was obnoxiously, publicly bitter about not getting an Oscar for Deliverance; he became unpleasant on talk shows. He claimed it was because he’d posed semi-nude for Cosmopolitan, basically accusing Hollywood of elitist prudery. He bit the hand that was feeding him.
Let’s not overlook one very simple thing: his name is … Burt. I mean, c’mon! It’s a funny name. The children of the '70s who may not have seen his movies grew up into the adults of the '80s who just couldn’t take a guy named “Burt” seriously. I worked for a guy in the late '80s and early '90s whose son, every time he would call on the phone, would identify himself as “Burt”, (his name was actually Alex), and the kid thought this was hilarious.
“Burt” stopped sounding like a tough-guy name and instead started sounding like an old man’s name.
Not as funny as “Turd Ferguson” though.
I read a comment a few months back in which he was bemoaning the fact that after having been the number one male movie star in the world five years in a row he fell to number thirty seven in just one year, and that such a fall has never happened to any other movie star before or since.
That’s some heavy-duty plummeting right there.
What’s funny about it? Burt was in the top thousand most popular names for American boys from 1936 to 1973.
What happened? Did nearly all his fans suddenly die?
Well, looking at his IMDB Box Office record (not all of which is available), he remained something of a draw right up until Stroker Ace and Smokey and the Bandit 3. But I was serious earlier, the general reviews for Paternity and Best Little Whorehouse at the time were just horrific. It just took a couple more movies before the public gave up on him.
scotandrsn
You brought up some movies made during Burt Reynolds’ decline: (“Stroker Ace” “Smokey and the Bandit 3” (yes he only made a cameo appearance in that one but it was enough to add to Burt’s decline. That movie was rotten.)
Anyway, I thought I’d list hs films from the very first 1980 release to 1987 to show just how bad his films were getting even before “Stroker Ace” and after:
(source IMDB)
Rough Cut (1980)
Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)
The Cannonball Run (1981)
Paternity (1981)
Sharky’s Machine (1981)
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
Best Friends (1982)
Stroker Ace (1983)
Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983)
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
Cannonball Run II (1984)
City Heat (1984)
Stick (1985)
Uphill All the Way (1986) (uncredited)
Shattered If Your Kid’s on Drugs (1986) (TV)
Heat (1986)
Malone (1987)
Rent-a-Cop (1987)
There seems to be a pattern developing there don’t you think?