Bankrupt Burt! How Reynolds Went From Hollywood’s Highest Paid To The Poor House
Feb. 25 2019, Updated 11:43 a.m. ET
There was a time Burt Reynolds was the highest paid actor in Hollywood. But by the time he died suddenly on Thursday Aug. 6, a series of bad investments and failed relationships saw it all go away. Gone were the care free days of posing naked on bearskin rugs for magazines, replaced instead by lawsuits, foreclosures and bankruptcies. See how it all went wrong for the former A-lister in this RadarOnline.com gallery
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At his peak, Reynolds was making more than $10 million a year. His hits include classics like Deliverance, The Longest Yard, and the Smokey and the Bandit franchise.
But a bunch of bad bets nearly cost him everything. First, he invested in and owned the USFL football team the Tampa Bay Bandits, which was meant to compete with the NFL. The team folded after just three seasons.
His nightclub, Burt’s Place, in Atlanta closed after one year.
He also opened several restaurants across America, including 30 chains of the “Po Folk’s” country cooking franchise and “Burt & Jacks” along the waterfront in Fort Lauderdale. All are now gone.
In 2011, Reynolds faced a foreclosure lawsuit that claimed he owed about $1.2 million for a mortgage on the nearly 4-acre Hobe Sound home he called "Valhalla.”
The home featured five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a 2,000-square-foot guesthouse, a cinema, a swimming pool, a wine room, an indoor waterfall, a billiard room, a boat dock and a helicopter pad.
But the banks that held the title on the home claimed the actor hadn’t made any payments on the property since 2010.
Reynolds was forced to sell the property in 2014.
But perhaps his greatest loss came after his brutal divorce from actress Loni Anderson.
The 80s superstars were married for five years, and broke up in vicious public fashion, with Reynolds claiming that Anderson was unfaithful and a bad mother, while she claimed that the Boogie Nights actor had abused her.
The money struggle between the two caused Reynolds to file for bankruptcy in 1996.
In 2014, the Hollywood star was forced to auction off more than 600 items of memorabilia, including the Golden Globe he won for his supporting role in Boogie Nights.
It would be 22 years before Reynolds would fully pay Anderson everything he owed her.
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