Once one of Hollywood’s highest paid and well-known actors. Burt Reynolds faces losing his Florida home as his debts continue to grow.
Singapore -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/06/2011 -- Burt Reynolds was once one of Hollywood’s highest paid and well-known actors. But now, at the age of seventy five, the “Deliverance” star faces losing his Florida home as his debts continue to grow.
On the 1st September 2011 Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation filed a foreclosure lawsuit in Martin County against the “Smokey and the Bandit” star. The suit claims that mortgage payments have not been paid on his 1,115 m2 property in Hobe Sound, Florida since 1st September 2010.
"The Plaintiff [Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation] must be paid US$1,193,808 in principal on the mortgage note and mortgage, together with interest from August 1st 2010 and all costs and reasonable attorney's fees," noted the writ.
Reynolds and his former wife Loni Anderson signed up for a US$1.5 million mortgage on the five bedroom property in May 1994. The mortgage was due to be paid off in 2019.
In 2009 a local US newspaper reported that Reynolds had put the five bedroom, waterfront property, which he nicknamed “Valhalla”, on the market for US$8.9 million.
Although it boasts a swimming pool, a gym, a wine room, a hair salon, seven bathrooms, a boat dock and a helipad, the property failed to sell.
Reynolds blamed the US economy and the property market crash as the main reasons. But a recent assessment, carried out by Merrill Lynch, valued the property at just US$2.4 million.
However, the actor is hoping to get back on track and is staying positive amid allegations surrounding his current finances.
"I am as surprised as everyone. I thought my career and my life could not be going better. To all of the people who have had such faith in me and stuck by me through thick and thin, thank you. I know it is not the end of the world. There are a hell of a lot of other people worse off than I am, and my heart goes out to them. I will do like I've always done, keep my head up high and continue to move on down the road" Reynolds said in a recent interview with ABC News.
Recently Reynolds began filming a new made-for-television movie “Reel Love” starring country singer LeAnn Rimes and Shawn Robert in Toronto, Canada.
The straight to television film is due to premiere on US channel Country Music Television (CMT) later this month.