A few months before his untimely death, Burt Reynolds was cast in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The Hollywood legend trained and had a script read for what would have been his last performance.
Reynolds was to pay George Spahn, the de-facto American farm owner whose property the film industry had used to West.
He is best known for allowing Charles Manson’s family cult to live there when he was 80 and blind, in exchange for women cooking and cleaning for him and sexual favors.
Upon reading the script and discovering that Brad Pitt will play Cliff Booth opposite him, Smokey and the Thieves star told Tarantino, “You’ve got to have someone say, ‘You’re pretty for a stuntman’.”
In fact, the line suggested by Reynolds appears in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when told to Booth by Bruce Lee.
Sadly, the 82-year-old was unable to play his part in front of Pete, and the last thing he did before his death was to run his lines with his assistant.
However, his friend Bruce Dern, who had already worked with Tarantino on Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, was cast as Spahn instead.
James Marsden even portrayed Reynolds himself as a young man in 1969 in the extended segment of the film.
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Tarantino added, “I had the opportunity to train with him. I am officially the last role he played because he came to read the script. So, this was his last acting.”
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