'Ihave tremendous regrets about things," Burt Reynolds says. "I could have done things gentler, better."
The seventies star, whose first big hit was the 1972 movie Deliverance and whose moment of sex-symbol being was forever captured in the photograph of him, lounging nude on a bear rug, for the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine that same year, has placed his tinted aviator glasses on the table between us.
For much of our conversation, he fixes his gaze on the middle distance.
"Gentler?" I inquire, curious about his choice in words.
He now turns to look directly at me.
"Gentler, yes," he says. "With relationships and whatever."
Dressed in black from head to toe, Mr. Reynolds reposes on his wooden chair, like a cowboy against a fence.
He is all angles, tall and lean, a knee crooked here, an elbow bent there, a hand on his hip. He even walks in a sort of stiff saunter, as if ambling out of the past, a little rusty after all these years.
In Toronto recently to accept an award for his philanthropic work from Best Buddies Canada, a charitable organization, Mr. "call me Burt" Reynolds seems aware of his place in celebrity history and exudes a kitschy retro vibe.
His black mustache, a trademark, speaks of bellbottoms, smoky poker games and hairy chests. But he doesn't wear it with irony.
The mustache is part of the 71-year-old's brittle stuck-in-time exterior that has been helped, or rather stitched in place, by some obvious plastic surgery.
Which is why the soft interior that Mr. Reynolds readily puts on display is a surprise.
"Marriage is a course I failed at," he says with a laugh, when asked if he would ever make the commitment again.
He has been married twice: for two years in the mid-sixties to comedian Judy Carne, a star on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and later (from 1988 until 1995) to actress Loni Anderson.
"I passed up some incredible, wonderful women," he continues.
By not marrying them?
"Yeah, and I think that probably I would still be married if I'd married some of them."
I mention Dinah Shore, the late singer and actress, who was 20 years his senior.
"Yeah," he acknowledges easily. "You know, I was aware she was older because I would see old movies with her in them. But I had no sense that she was older. Her spirit," he muses. "And who she was and her class ..." he says, trailing off.
"It was before my marriage to Loni," he explains. He went on her daytime talk show as a surprise guest. "It was one of those moments that people say never happens in life. But there was something about her. And I grabbed her. And we did this whole kiss," he says, leaning over to mimic the swooping embrace they had. "And then I said, 'Would you go down to Palm Springs with me this weekend?' And she said, 'Let's go right now.' And she turned, and we walked off the set together."
They were a couple for six years.
Was it one of his greatest love affairs?
"Yes," he says without hesitation. "But I guess Sally [Field] was the one, if I had to name the woman who really stole my heart."
"She was after Loni?"
"It happened before, and then I came back to her after. You have to hit me between the eyes to get it," he says a bit sorrowfully.
His choices in women weren't smart?
"Not about this one," he says slowly, as if lost in the memory of Ms. Field. "I'd messed [marriage] up, and so I thought, don't go there and screw this up. This is perfect, right now."
"Did she want to marry you?"
"I hope so. It seems that every time I wanted to marry her, she said, 'No, we better not.' And every time, she said, 'Okay, let's do it,' I said, 'Oh, I don't know. Maybe we better wait a little while.' "
