Burt Reynolds attends the Palm Beach International Film Festival‘s Student Showcase of Film Awards at the World Performing Arts Center at Lynn University on Friday, March 10, 2017 in Boca Raton, Fla. (Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg/Invision/AP)

Over the years, Las Vegas smacked Burt Reynolds around the way he once lovingly slapped Dom DeLuise in the “Cannonball Run” movies.

The city was home to some low points in the life and career of the Hollywood icon, .

Production of 1980’s “Smokey and the Bandit II” passed through Las Vegas when Reynolds and his co-star, Sally Field, whom he’s called the love of his life, were near the end of their five years together. “Throughout the rest of the filming, from Georgia to Las Vegas, Sally and I had perhaps the most heated affair of our relationship,” Reynolds wrote in “My Life,” his 1994 memoir. “The sex was angry — well, wonderful and mean — but we couldn’t keep from it. Before returning to L.A., Sally simply said, ‘It’s over, pal.’ ”

Seven years later, Reynolds hit movie theaters as Las Vegas bodyguard Nick Escalante in the thriller “Heat.” The movie was a disaster, earning just $2.8 million at the box office, a figure that barely covered the star’s reported $2 million salary. “Heat,” along with the similarly titled “City Heat” three years earlier, helped send Reynolds, who had been Hollywood’s top-grossing star from 1978 through 1982, into a series of forgettable roles.

Then, in December 2014, Reynolds, who was facing financial hardship from numerous bad business decisions, had to sell more than 600 items from throughout his career in a high-profile auction at the Palms. Among the items sold in the two-day event were the “Smokey and the Bandit” Trans Am, which fetched $450,000; his 1998 Golden Globe for “Boogie Nights,” which sold for $21,250; and a canoe from the movie “Deliverance,” which brought $17,500.

Christopher Lawrence at or. Follow on Twitter.