Rex Reed - Life and Career

Life and Career

Reed was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Jewell (née Smith) and James M. Reed, an oil company supervisor.

Reed has acted occasionally, such as in the movie version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge. Reed also appeared in the films Inchon! and Superman (as himself), and was a regular on the TV show The Gong Show in the late 1970s. Reed additionally served on the jury at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971, and guest voiced as himself on the animated series The Critic.

Rex Reed appears in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism explaining how important film critics were in the 1970s, and complaining about the proliferation of unqualified critical voices on the Internet.

He lives at the Dakota apartment building in New York City. Reed is openly gay. Reed is good friends with gossip columnist Liz Smith. He is a member of New York Film Critics Circle and, because his reviews appear on the Internet, he is a member of New York Film Critics Online.