By Lee Pfeiffer
The sad decline of Burt Reynolds' career and personal life continues. He once shared the honor of being top boxoffice attraction in the world with Clint Eastwood. However, while Eastwood continued to refine his skills as actor and director with off-beat and challenging projects, Reynolds continued to try to milk the same old cinematic cow (i.e corn pone country comedies) long after the craze had passed. His health problems began in the in mid-1980s when he suffered severe consequences from a stunt that went wrong while he was filming City Heat with Eastwood. Rumors abounded that he was suffering from AIDS and the work dried up. He made a comeback of sorts on the small screen in the 1990s with the TV series Evening Shade, which was a modest hit. His big screen comeback in Boogie Nights earned him an Oscar nomination but success was short-lived. He squandered the renewed interest in his career by immediately plunging into low-rent TV crime movies.