The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (350 page)

Reynolds was quarterback for Florida State University, and he might have played for the Baltimore Colts but for an accident. Still, he tried being a stuntman and that took him into movies and TV. His small-screen personality was based in shows like
Riverboat, Hawk
, and
Dan August;
it carried on in talk shows and regular appearances on the
Tonight
show.

His movie career developed slowly, and it is notable that he was most comfortable in unprestigious pictures where he was able to explore the possibilities of a shrewder-than-average good ol’ boy, without much competition:
Angel Baby
(61, Paul Wendkos);
Operation C.I.A
. (65, Christian Nyby);
Sam Whiskey
(68, Arnold Laven);
Impasse
(68, Richard Benedict);
Caine
(68, Samuel Fuller);
100 Rifles
(69, Tom Gries);
Skullduggery
(69, Gordon Douglas);
Deliverance
(72, John Boorman);
Fuzz
(72, Richard A. Colla);
Shamus
(72, Buzz Kulik);
White Lightning
(73, Joseph Sargent), the debut of Gator McKlusky;
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing
(73, Richard C. Sarafian); as a football-playing convict in
The Longest Yard
(74, Robert Aldrich); very good in
Hustle
(75, Aldrich) as a cop made edgy by Catherine Deneuve as the whore he loves;
W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings
(75, John G. Avildsen);
Lucky Lady
(75, Stanley Donen);
At Long Last Love
(75, Peter Bogdanovich), in which he nearly carried off clumsy song-and-dance amateurishness;
Gator
(76), which he directed himself as an unequivocal adolescent daydream;
Nickelodeon
(76, Bogdanovich);
Smokey and the Bandit
(77, Hal Needham), a drive-in recordbreaker;
Semi-Tough
(77, Michael Ritchie);
The End
(78), a well-intentioned but spasmodic attempt at a taboo subject;
Hooper
(78, Needham), in which he plays a stuntman; and
Starting Over
(79, Alan J. Pakula).

By 1980, Burt Reynolds was slipping away from being a major boxoffice figure. He made many forgettable pictures, and he had a prolonged illness. But he seemed more relaxed, not least in his marriage to Loni Anderson, and he began to acquire the comic technique he had often talked about. In short, he improved—a remarkable claim in American film nowadays—as is evident most of all in the TV series,
Evening Shade
, where he could be a delight. The films are:
Smokey and the Bandit II
(80, Needham);
Rough Cut
(80, Don Siegel);
The Cannonball Run
(81, Needham);
Sharky’s Machine
(81), which he directed;
Paternity
(81, David Steinberg);
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
(82, Colin Higgins);
Best Friends
(82, Norman Jewison);
The Man Who Loved Women
(83, Blake Edwards);
Stroker Ace
(83, Needham);
Smokey and the Bandit III
(83, Dick Lowry);
Cannonball Run II
(84, Needham);
City Heat
(84, Richard Benjamin), with Clint Eastwood;
Stick
(85), which he directed, from Elmore Leonard’s novel, and which is quite funny;
Heat
(87, R. M. Richards);
Malone
(87, Harley Cokliss);
Rent-a-Cop
(88, Jerry London);
Switching Channels
(88, Ted Kotcheff);
The Dancer’s Touch
(88, William A. Fraker);
Physical Evidence
(89, Michael Crichton);
Breaking In
(89, Bill Forsyth), in which he is as good as he has ever been;
Modern Love
(90, Robby Benson); and
Cop-and-a-Half
(93, Henry Winkler).

When the time came for breakup with Loni Anderson, there was still an edginess in Reynolds that made for a tabloid mess of rare proportions.

Reynolds is nearly seventy after the busiest time of his life—he had eight credits in 1999 alone. Not that the story is cheerful. He has had his first Oscar nomination, for
Boogie Nights
(97, Paul Thomas Anderson). He has become white-haired. Yet, for the most part, he is caught in a pattern of banal action films, few of which are properly opened or reviewed. There’s not much doubt that he could be better. He is, by now, a more accomplished performer than many people who still have leads. But he is actually the grim personification of a kind of bottom-of-the-barrel work that is made chillingly appealing in
Boogie Nights
. He has directed a few more times
—The Man from Left Field
(93),
Hard Time
(98),
The Last Producer
(00)—and I’m sure he knows more than most of his directors. But even a select record makes sad reading:
The Maddening
(95, Danny Huston);
Striptease
(96, Andrew Bergman);
Citizen Ruth
(96, Alexander Payne);
Mad Dog Time
(96, Larry Bishop);
The Cherokee Kid
(96, Paris Barclay);
Meet Wally Sparks
(97, Peter Baldwin);
Bean
(97, Mel Smith);
Crazy Six
(98, Albert Pyun); the director of the CIA in
Universal Soldier II
(98, Jeff Woolnough);
Stringer
(99, Klaus Biedermann);
Mystery, Alaska
(99, Jay Roach);
Big City Blues
(99, Clive Fleury);
The Crew
(00, Michael Dinner);
Driven
(01, Renny Harlin);
The Hollywood Sign
(01, Sonke Wortmann);
Hotel
(01, Mike Figgis);
Time of the Wolf
(02, Rod Pridy);
The Librarians
(03, Mike Kirton).

The list goes on, with the occasional real picture—then a remake of
The Longest Yard
(05, Peter Segal);
The Dukes of Hazzard
(05, Jay Chandrasekhar)—and then a run of pictures that hardly get a theatrical opening.
Deal
(09, Gil Cates Jr.), but Burt now looked like a CG head.

Debbie Reynolds
(Mary Frances Reynolds), b. El Paso, Texas, 1932
Educated in Burbank, Debbie Reynolds was a French-horn and bassoon player in the Burbank Youth Symphony Orchestra and Miss Burbank of 1948. She has few rivals for cheerfulness and bounce. François Truffaut has already eulogized the moment in
Singin’ in the Rain
(52, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly) when, at the end of a vigorous dance routine, she has the presence of mind to restrain her disordered skirt so that her knickers will not show.

She was always a competent dancer and singer in a succession of musicals:
The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady
(50, David Butler); playing but being dubbed by Helen Kane in
Three Little Words
(50, Richard Thorpe);
Singin’ in the Rain
and
Give a Girl a Break
(53) for Donen;
I Love Melvin
(53) and
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis
(53) for Don Weis;
Susan Slept Here
(54) and
Say One for Me
(59) for Frank Tashlin;
Hit the Deck
(55, Roy Rowland); Charles Walters’s
The Tender Trap
(55) and
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
(64); and Gower Champion’s
My Six Loves
(63).

Toward the end of the 1950s, she became bogged down in sentimentality in
Tammy and the Bachelor
(57, Joseph Pevney);
It Started with a Kiss
(59, George Marshall); and
The Mating Game
(59, Marshall). But she is a versatile comedienne and her acting built up over the years with Richard Brooks’s
The Catered Affair
(56); Blake Edwards’s
This Happy Feeling
(58);
The Rat Race
(60, Robert Mulligan); excellent in Minnelli’s
Goodbye Charlie
(64); in Curtis Harrington’s
What’s the Matter with Helen?
(71); as well as in her own engaging television show (1969–70).

She was in
Sadie and Son
(87, John Llewellyn Moxey) and
Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder
(89, Christian I. Nyby II); and she took a small role in
Heaven and Earth
(93, Oliver Stone).

Bounce hit the skids in the 1990s. In 1997, Debbie and her small neighborhood casino in Las Vegas had to file for bankruptcy; it had been her hope to mount a Hollywood museum there. She was pretty good in
Mother
(96, Albert Brooks), but after that she was working to survive, playing herself on
Hollywood Squares
and doing a voice on
Rugrats
. There was
In & Out
(97, Frank Oz); a voice in
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(98, Terry Gilliam);
Zack and Reba
(98, Nicole Bettauer);
Halloweentown
(98, Duwayne Dunham);
The Christmas Wish
(98, Ian Barry);
A Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story
(99, John Korty);
Virtual Mom
(00, Laurie Lynd); and then—the coup de grace—playing “Piper Grayson” in a would-be TV sit-com called
These Old Broads
, in which her costars were Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine.

She had a role on TV in
Will and Grace
.

Ving
(Irving)
Rhames
, b. New York, 1959
On a few occasions—like
Pulp Fiction
and the Don King biopic—Ving Rhames has soared into areas of humor and fantasy that were unexpected, but emphatically right. If, much more of the time, he has been simply a stalwart—as a sidekick, a cop, or a heavy—that testifies to the limits set upon all actors, black or otherwise. But there is some magic in Rhames, some impulse (as witness the way he passed his Golden Globe to Jack Lemmon) that begs to be used.

He studied at the State University of New York, Purchase, and at Juilliard, and it was in those days that friend Stanley Tucci gave him the name “Ving.” He made his debut in
Go Tell It on the Mountain
(84, Stan Latham) and carried on with
Native Son
(86, Jerrold Freedman);
Patty Hearst
(88, Paul Schrader);
Casualties of War
(89, Brian De Palma);
The Long Walk Home
(90, Richard Pearce);
Jacob’s Ladder
(90, Adrian Lyne);
Flight of the Intruder
(90, John Milius);
Homicide
(91, David Mamet);
The People Under the Stairs
(92, Wes Craven);
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
(92, Roger Spottiswoode);
Bound by Honor
(93, Taylor Hackford);
Dave
(93, Ivan Reitman);
The Saint of Fort Washington
(93, Tim Hunter).

He was Marsellus Wallace in
Pulp Fiction
(94, Quentin Tarantino);
Drop Squad
(94, Clark Johnson);
Kiss of Death
(95, Barbet Schroeder);
Mission: Impossible
(96, De Palma);
Striptease
(96, Andrew Bergman);
Dangerous Ground
(97, Darrell James Roodt);
Rosewood
(97, John Singleton); winning that Golden Globe as Don King in
Only in America
(97, John Herzfeld);
Body Count
(98, Robert Patton-Spruill);
Out of Sight
(98, Steven Soderbergh);
Entrapment
(99, Jon Amiel);
Bringing Out the Dead
(99, Martin Scorsese);
Mission: Impossible II
(00, John Woo); as Johnnie Cochran on TV in
American Tragedy
(00, Lawrence Schiller);
Holiday Heart
(00, Robert Townsend);
Baby Boy
(01, Singleton);
Sins of the Father
(02, Robert Dornhelm);
Little John
(02, Dick Lowry);
Undisputed
(02, Walter Hill);
RFK
(02, Dornhelm);
Dark Blue
(02, Ron Shelton);
Sin
(03, Michael Stevens);
Dawn of the Dead
(04, Zack Snyder);
Envy
(04, Barry Levinson);
Secret Window
(04, David Koepp);
Animal
(05, David J. Burke);
Shooting Gallery
(05, Keoni Waxman);
Mission: Impossible III
(06, J. J. Abrams);
Idlewild
(06, Bryan Barber);
Football Wives
(07, Bryan Singer);
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
(07, Dennis Dugan);
A Broken Life
(08, Neil Coombs);
Day of the Dead
(08, Steve Miner);
Saving God
(08, Duane Crichton).

Christina Ricci
, b. Santa Monica, California, 1980
For years now, it seems, with or without effects makeup, Christina Ricci has been like our Shirley Temple on leaving the asylum where Frances Farmer was ruined. Except that, at the age of twenty-four, this flat-stare actress continues to show astonishing skill, the drive to make over thirty films, and the urge to be her own producer. The next few years will be crucial in determining whether she has the ideas and the range for a big career, or whether she was “just” a teen phenomenon (and one of the most accurate portraits of that mindset ever dared by American movies). Whatever the case, there are young women who hold to Christina Ricci as an attitudinal model.

How she got a proper education is hard to say, she was working so much. Let’s just say that wisdom (seeking shelter) clung to her. She made her debut in
Mermaids
(90, Richard Benjamin) and followed it with
The Hard Way
(91, John Badham) and really established herself as the chilly Wednesday in
The Addams Family
(91, Barry Sonnenfeld) and
Addams Family Values
(93, Sonnenfeld);
The Cemetery Club
(92, Bill Duke); helpless to rescue
Casper
(95, Brad Silberling);
Now and Then
(95, Lesli Linka Glatter);
Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain
(95, Kevin James Dobson);
Bastard Out of Carolina
(96, Anjelica Huston—her mother twice!);
Last of the High Kings
(96, David Keating);
That Darn Cat
(97, Bob Spiers); superb in
The Ice Storm
(97, Ang Lee); disturbingly grown up in
Buffalo 66
(98, Vincent Gallo);
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(98, Terry Gilliam); another breakthrough in
The Opposite of Sex
(98, Don Roos);
Desert Blue
(99, Morgan J. Freeman);
I Woke Up Early the Day I Died
(98, Aris Iliopulos);
Pecker
(98, John Waters);
200 Cigarettes
(99, Risa Bramon Garcia); with Johnny Depp in
Sleepy Hollow
(99, Tim Burton);
Bless the Child
(00, Chuck Russell);
The Man Who Cried
(00, Sally Potter);
The Laramie Project
(02, Moisés Kaufman);
Pumpkin
(02, Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder);
Miranda
(02, Marc Munden);
The Gathering
(02, Brian Gilbert);
Anything Else
(03, Woody Allen); and in a project she had nursed through serious delays
—Prozac Nation
(01, Erik Skjoldbjaerg). She was the love interest in
Monster
(03, Patty Jenkins).