He's one of the world's most legendary movie stars (and movie mustaches, for that matter), but a new-to-TV documentary manages to reveal the man behind the myth that is Burt Reynolds.
I Am Burt Reynolds—a non-fiction film centered on the iconic star of films like 1974's The Longest Yard, 1977's Smokey and the Bandit, 1981's The Cannonball Run and 1997's Boogie Nights, who passed in 2018 at the age of 82—makes its long-awaited television premiere on The CW on Saturday, December 30 from 8 pm to 10 pm ET.
The documentary film is readily available for anyone with a traditional pay-TV subscription or TV antenna that receives local station signals, as well as live TV streaming subscribers to Fubo, Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV and YouTube TV.
Directed by Adrian Buitenhuis, the doc traces Reynolds' decades-spanning career, from his early work in television series like Gunsmoke and Hawk to his cinema heyday in the '70s and '80s, and his career revival in the late '90s. (He earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work as adult-film director Jack Horner in Boogie Nights.)
It also delves deep into his personal life, including his marriage to and subsequent divorce from actress Loni Anderson, who is an interviewee in the doc, alongside Quinton Reynolds, the son she and Burt adopted in 1988. Other candid stories about the actor come from fellow stars like Jon Voight, Bruce Dern and Marilu Henner.
The film is the latest installment in the "I Am" documentary series, a series of celebrity biography docs that were commissioned for the Paramount Network and now are airing on The CW. Similar star-focused titles including I Am Heath Ledger, I Am Paul Walker and I Am Patrick Swayze, all of which were also directed by Buitenhuis.
Buitenhuis told The New York Post why Reynolds made for such a compelling biographical subject: “Burt’s story is the thread of someone who had been around since old Hollywood and how [the industry] evolved through him. When you go back through someone’s life and films in relationship to their personal life it changes how you look at their movies."
The filmmaker continued: "This is a man who hasn’t been given his due and it was an amazing story to be told—the scope of his generational, decades long career with tons of great films to pull from and a family that was behind the idea."
Check out the trailer for I Am Burt Reynolds before tuning in tonight on The CW.
