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.
Burt ReynoldsThat's a big responsibility, and the details obsess me. And, also, I no longer feel I have to do the Tonight Show every time I open my mouth. Twenty years ago, I told myself I'd rather direct than act, and it's taken me this long. You lose your passion in acting. You make too many mistakes. Maybe that's why I make so many movies; if you don't like this one, another one's opening on Tuesday. But then I spent six months of my life on 'At Long Last Love,' a picture nobody saw. I enjoyed making it, I learned from it, I grew, but that's too much time out of my life.
Burt ReynoldsI had known Hal [Needham] for a while by the time he moved in, so I was sure we'd get along well, and we did. He'd go off and do his gigs and I would do mine, and when we were lucky we got to work on the same ones.
Burt Reynolds