It was a bit of a lark when I agreed to do [Smokey and the Bandit], and I knew we'd have fun if we could get Jackie Gleason.

I'm really much more like Phil Potter from [the 1979 film] Starting Over. People do think I'm the Bandit [from Smokey and the Bandit ], and I'm a lot more serious than that.

The most important thing to remember is: to protect your quarterback - ME!

Our family really didn't have a car; we had my dad's police cruiser. Later he got a Buick, and that's what I was driving when I had a wreck. I'm lucky it was as big and strong as it was, because that Buick is what saved my life.

Trans Am sales went up 70 percent after Smokey and the Bandit, and I was promised a free car every year for life by the Pontiac president.

But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act.

Money doesn't buy happiness. It buys great hookers - but not happiness.