Judge Reinhold thinks his acting career was derailed by studio politics he has branded an “executive murder plot”. The 67-year-old actor cemented his fame with his role as gormless police officer Billy Rosewood in 1984’s ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ alongside Eddie Murphy, 63, and John Ashton, 76, but said he hit a major bump when studio bosses started to get involved in killing off actor’s high salaries. He told Vanity Fair things reached a head when he starred in 1988 body-swap comedy ‘Vice Versa’ alongside ‘The Wonder Years’ child actor Fred Savage, now 47, and said it failed at the box office due to behind-the-scenes wranglings over pay.
Judge – born Edward Ernest Reinhold Jr – said making the film was easy, but “what happened to it” after production was a travesty. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. He declared: “It was basically an executive murder plot.
David Puttnam, who produced ‘Chariots of Fire’, became the head of Columbia Pictures, and we all loved him because he was a creative and he had done indies. “The downside with David was he wanted to bring the price of lead actors down, but make the backend profits real. “I believed him.
I really did. And he wasn’t, unfortunately, around long enough to prove that formula.” Judge added the studio also decided on an ill-timed release for ‘Vice Versa’, which coincided with other 1980s body-swap comedies such as ‘Like Father Like Son’.
