Happy Birthday, Burt Reynolds! A guide to some of his best movies.

3. “Boogie Nights”
It’s said that Burt Reynolds so disliked “Boogie Nights” the first time he saw it that he fired his agent who had advised him to do it. This suggests Reynolds may not always know what’s best for his career, but the movie confirms his strengths as a character actor. As porn director Jack Horner, Reynolds provides a solid center the story revolves around, and he takes a character who could easily have seemed sleazy and made him ... more 

3. “Boogie Nights”
It’s said that Burt Reynolds so disliked “Boogie Nights” the first time he saw it that he fired his agent who had advised him to do it. This suggests Reynolds may not always know what’s best for his career, but the movie confirms his strengths as a character actor. As porn director Jack Horner, Reynolds provides a solid center the story revolves around, and he takes a character who could easily have seemed sleazy and made him paternal and genuinely likable as he guides his misfit band of mildly delusional actors and technicians through the Porno Chic days of the late 1970s and early ‘80s. The movie earned Reynolds his first and only Oscar nomination. less