Burt Reynolds: Actor says he regrets his famous nude bear skin rug photo

Posted by: News Mar 21, 2016 in World 1 Comment

At a recent interview at SXSW, Burt Reynolds admitted that he regrets posing nude for Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1972.

“It was really stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Reynolds, now 80, said of his most famous photograph.

The now-famous photograph made waves when it first came out in Cosmopolitan magazine in the early ’70s. The eyebrow-raising issue sold 1.5 million copies of the magazine and helped cement both Cosmo and Reynolds’ name in popular culture. The racy picture came out right as Reynolds’ iconic film “Deliverance” hit theaters.

After the photo and the film came out, Reynolds was an international sex symbol.

In the sit-down, Reynolds revealed that he thinks he did the naked shoot because he didn’t want people to think he was afraid to do it. The former “Evening Shade” actor said, “As long as it was only a certain amount of pubic hair showing, I was all for it, you know.”

The icon also told the audience in Austin, Texas, that he had to be pretty liquored up before the big reveal.

Reynolds explained, “The only rules I had… I wanted a lot of drinks before. I have to be truthful, I was totally zonkered when I did the picture. That stupid smile, that’s what it is you know.”

The 80-year-old was at the hip Texas festival to promote his upcoming documentary “The Bandit.” The doc follows his relationship with his friend and director Hal Needham during the filming of his iconic 1977 movie “Smokey And The Bandit.”