Off the back of Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance, Burt Reynolds spent the late 1970s as America's top box-office draw — for five consecutive years running one of the highest-paid actors in the industry.
His marriage to actress Loni Anderson ended in a very public, very expensive divorce in the mid-1990s, with legal fees and settlements widely reported in the millions. At the same time, his box-office pull had faded and offers dried up.
A restaurant chain that carried his name failed, adding more debt on top of the divorce, and jaw surgery in the early '90s further limited the work he could take on.
He filed for bankruptcy in 1996, reporting roughly $10 million in debts.
He kept working through it — his Oscar-nominated role in Boogie Nights arrived the very next year — and continued acting steadily into his 80s, right up until his death in 2018.
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