ABC: Barbara Walters Special- Burt Reynolds: 12/02/1980

Source:ABC- Actor/comedian Burt Reynolds. 

Source:The Daily Review

"ABC Barbara Walters Special - Dec.2,1980 - Burt Reynolds Interview."

Source:ABC- ABC News anchor and correspondent Barbara Walters 

From ABC

Burt Reynolds, sharing a great story about fame and what the movie executive he was talking to about the kind of money that he could make for his movies. And this meeting must have happened in the 1970s perhaps even before Smokey and The Bandit which came out in 1977. With the movie executive telling Burt that he could make a million dollars for each movie that he does.

If you go back to 1970 and what million dollars was then it would be 6.5 million dollars today. Today a million dollars for a movie would be a great living for most people who aren't shopaholics, or alcoholics, addicted to illegal narcotics, don't have multiple wives and families, aren't gambling or adrenaline junkies, and are fairly responsible with their income. But back then that would be an insane amount of money. It would mean you would only have to do one movie a year and not even have to do any work for the rest of the year and maybe just appear on TV shows and do interviews with the rest of your time.

And this guy telling Burt that he could make all of this money simply for acting in movies and Burt reacting like he just won a 100 million dollar lottery or something, perhaps without even playing the lottery and has all of this money that's now coming to him and he simply can't believe it and doesn't know how to respond to it. So he does what any other normal person would or perhaps just Burt Reynolds and he hyperventilates over it. As crazy as this may sound, actors are also humans and not everything they do is acting. They have the same emotions and reactions that everyone else does and perhaps they just hide them better or in Burt Reynolds case perhaps not as well. Telling someone who came from a humble beginning that Burt came from and that they could make so much money simply from acting, would catch a lot of people off guard even the best actors like Burt Reynolds.