Plenty of actors have short fuses, but they manage to maintain an air of professionalism long enough to get through a shoot they actively despise without causing major incidents. On the other hand, Burt Reynolds saw fit to punch a director in the face, which ended up costing him a small fortune.
In his defence, it was significantly less than he was sued for once the recipient of said punch filed a lawsuit, but that’s not really the point. Reynolds may have been the one who let his fists do the talking, but in the end, he was hurt in the worst place of all: right in the pocket.
Reynolds was already in precarious financial straits by the late 1980s, so being slapped with a $25 million suit wasn’t ideal. In terms of percentages, though, it could have been worse after Dick Richards was just one of several filmmakers who stopped by the set of Heat for a cup of coffee.
The 1986 crime thriller, which starred Reynolds as a bodyguard who enacts a one-man war of revenge against an organised crime syndicate for beating a childhood friend almost to death, was supposed to be a Robert Altman movie. However, he quit after one day of principal photography.
Richards was brought in as his replacement, but he abandoned ship after the leading man cracked him in the jaw. He was eventually lured back into the fold, but he exited the production permanently when he fell off a camera crane and ended up in the hospital, and it was Jerry Jameson who brought the film across the finish line when he filled in for the final week.
Although Reynolds wouldn’t file for bankruptcy until a decade later in 1996, he was still living well beyond his means. His heyday as Hollywood’s most bankable star was receding further and further into the rearview mirror, and forking out millions for punching Richards was the least desirable outcome.
On the plus side, he didn’t have to siphon off too much of his personal wealth in the grand scheme of things. That said, if he’d kept his fists to himself, he wouldn’t have had to pay out a penny. “I spent $500,000 on that punch,” he lamented to The New York Times. “If I hit a guy, it’s certain that he will run a studio or become a huge director.”
That definitely wasn’t the case with Richards, who never helmed another picture after Heat. Then again, Reynolds previously had issues with Joel Silver, who did go on to become one of the industry’s most powerful producers after becoming synonymous with the action genre’s 1980s peak through films like Lethal Weapon, Predator, and Die Hard. Or, as crazy as it sounds, maybe he’d have been better off not punching anybody.
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