I consider myself the white sheep of my family In April 1986, Reynolds went with a friend to a meeting with U.S. Sen. Robert Packwood, where the issue of a proposed cut in tobacco tax was raised.

[2] By June 1986, Reynolds had become an anti-smoking activist, appearing in adverts for the American Lung Association and testifying before a congressional subcommittee at the invitation of Packwood,[7][8] to the dismay of his family.

[4] That same year, Reynolds published The Gilded Leaf with Thomas Shachtman, chronicling three generations of his family and its tobacco business,[12][13] a book he had been working on since 1980.

"[15] His mother was his father's second wife Marianne O'Brien, an actress who appeared in films in the 1940s such as The Very Thought of You and was contracted to Jack L.

His live-in girlfriend, actress Shelley Duvall, had invited him to the set, and director Robert Altman cast him in a small non-speaking role.

Reynolds subsequently studied acting at several Los Angeles schools; with Milton Katselas, and classmates included Michelle Pfeiffer and Patrick Swayze.

[2] He married his first wife Regina Wahl in Ofterschwang, West Germany, in July 1983,[1] quit acting and briefly began working for her father's international bus company.