Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6339
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Burt Reynolds represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 51 years in, and Burt is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Burt Reynolds appears in 15 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Burt. Deliverance is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, comedy, family. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jeffrey Schwarz, Uwe Boll, Peter Segal and others, Burt Reynolds helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Deliverance (1972) as Lewis Medlock · The Player (1992) as Burt Reynolds · Smokey and the Bandit (1977) as Bandit
Career snapshot
Ranked #6339 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
15
1972–2023
Career length
51 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Deliverance
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Deliverance
Most frequent director
Hal Needham
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Hal Needham
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.7
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1970s
6.9 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Smokey and the Bandit, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask, Deliverance — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
6.9
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
6.9
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Smokey and the Bandit, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask, Deliverance.
Most productive era
2000s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.21 film | 6.81 film | 7.01 film | 6.22 films | 6.21 film | — |
| Action | 6.91 film | 6.31 film | — | 5.82 films | — | — |
| Thriller | 7.21 film | — | 7.01 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | 6.72 films | 6.52 films | 6.82 films | 6.32 films | 6.21 film | — |
| Crime | — | — | 7.01 film | 6.81 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1972Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Switchboard.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1972Deliverance
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Self (archive footage).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
15 of 15 films
as Lewis Medlock
Directed by John Boorman
as Bandit
Directed by Hal Needham
as Charlie B. Barkin (voice)
Directed by Don Bluth
as J.J. McClure
Directed by Hal Needham
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Lewis Medlock
Deliverance (1972)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lewis Medlock gives Burt Reynolds a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bandit
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Performance score7.5
Smokey and the Bandit asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bandit is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Charlie B. Barkin (voice)
All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
Performance score7.4
All Dogs Go to Heaven asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Charlie B. Barkin (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage)
I Am Burt Reynolds (2020)
Performance score7.2
I Am Burt Reynolds asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Lewis Medlock
Start here. Deliverance is the clearest statement of what Burt Reynolds does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Burt at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Smokey and the Bandit (1977)
Keeps the adventure register of Deliverance but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Cannonball Run (1981)
Same director as Smokey and the Bandit, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
Keeps the comedy register of The Cannonball Run but asks for a colder reading of it.
I Am Burt Reynolds (2020)
A deliberate change of key after All Dogs Go to Heaven — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Hal Needham
Director
2 films together
Notably Smokey and the Bandit
John Boorman
Director
1 film together
Notably Deliverance
Woody Allen
Director
1 film together
Notably Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask
Don Bluth
Director
1 film together
Notably All Dogs Go to Heaven
Robert Altman
Director
1 film together
Notably The Player
Mel Smith
Director
1 film together
Notably Bean
Renny Harlin
Director
1 film together
Notably Driven
Steven Brill
Director
1 film together
Notably Without a Paddle
Peter Segal
Director
1 film together
Notably The Longest Yard
Uwe Boll
Director
1 film together
Notably In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Jeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together
Notably Commitment to Life
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hal Needham
Director
2 films together · 6.6 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Smokey and the BanditJohn Boorman
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DeliveranceRobert Altman
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PlayerPeter Segal
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Longest YardDon Bluth
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All Dogs Go to HeavenMel Smith
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BeanWoody Allen
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to AskSteven Brill
Director
1 film together · 5.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Without a PaddleRenny Harlin
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DrivenUwe Boll
Director
1 film together · 5.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege TaleJeffrey Schwarz
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Commitment to LifeSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Player
as Burt Reynolds
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All Dogs Go to Heaven
as Charlie B. Barkin (voice)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Deliverance
as Lewis Medlock
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Player
as Burt Reynolds
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Deliverance
as Lewis Medlock
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Burt Reynolds has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
51 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Player
as Burt Reynolds
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Player
as Burt Reynolds
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
All Dogs Go to Heaven
as Charlie B. Barkin (voice)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Player
as Burt Reynolds
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Smokey and the Bandit
as Bandit
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Smokey and the Bandit
as Bandit
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
All Dogs Go to Heaven
as Charlie B. Barkin (voice)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
as King Konreid
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
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Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: action and crime
Jamie Harris
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Have your say
Community
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Reference
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