Trivia

Rex Reed was arrested for allegedly shoplifting three CDs from a record store in February, 2000 after leaving a Tower Records in Manhattan with compact discs by Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, and Carmen McRae in his jacket pockets. Reed, who had just purchased two other CDs, says he forgot about the other three CDs and his offer to pay for them was refused. According to Reed, several days after the arrest, Peggy Lee sent him her entire catalog of CDs, because "she was so thrilled I wanted one of her CDs enough to put myself through so much hell". The charges were later dropped.

Reed lived in a two-bedroom apartment at The Dakota building in New York City, which he bought for $30,000 in 1969.

April 2000: Manhattan Judge Suzanne Mondo dismissed the charges against Rex Reed. That happened with none of the publicity that had surrounded his arrest, regarding 3 CDs worth less than $10.

Has lived in the famed Dakota apartment building in New York City since 1970. His first neighbors were Boris Karloff, Lauren Bacall and Robert Ryan.

His mother was from Oklahoma and her family lived among the outlaws. Her second cousins were the Dalton gang. His maternal grandfather was rocked as a child by Jesse James.

Named after General Zachary Taylor (his middle name is Taylor).

In 2017, Reed's review of The Shape of Water incorrectly referred to writer and director Guillermo del Toro as "Benecio del Toro" (apparently both confusing the director with actor Benicio del Toro, and failing to spell the latter's name correctly), and wrote that he was from Spain; the director is from Mexico and the actor is from Puerto Rico.

After Marisa Tomei won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1992 for her work in My Cousin Vinny, Reed said publicly that she had not actually won the award, and that presenter Jack Palance had accidentally read the wrong name off the card he was reading. When it was pointed out that the card had only one name on it, Reed changed his theory to say that Palance had read the wrong name off the teleprompter, and claimed (without evidence) that the academy went along with it because they would have been embarrassed to admit that mistake in front of a huge viewing audience. Reed was publicly rebutted by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, who said that if a presenter ever announced the wrong winner, a PwC representative would go on stage and state that the wrong result had been announced, before either stating the correct result or giving the information to someone on stage to correct it.

His paramour in college was Elizabeth Cole, who later changed her name to Elizabeth Ashley.

Reed was a longtime writer for The New York Observer, where he authored the "Talk of the Town" column. He was known for his blunt style and contrarian tastes, and some of his writing has been criticized for containing factual errors or disparaging remarks about actors.

In 2013, Reed reviewed "V/H/S/2", despite walking out of the film within its first 20 minutes. As a result, his review was brief and incorrectly summarized Jason Eisener's segment of the horror anthology. Some felt that Reed was unprofessional, and journalist Sam Adams stated that Reed was "making a mockery of a noble profession while intelligent critics scramble for crumbs all around him".

He included the film Get Out (2017) on his list of 10 Worst Films of 2017, and later sardonically stated in a CBS Sunday Morning interview, "I didn't care if all the black men are turned into robots." A writer on Sunday Morning's website noted that there were no actual robots in the film.

After Marlee Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Children of a Lesser God (1986), Reed wrote that Matlin had won because of a "pity vote", and that a deaf person playing a deaf character was not really acting.

Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1971

First job as a critic was as a television critic for Women's Wear Daily.

Graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Moved to New York City in 1960.

Reed acted occasionally, such as in the movie version of Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970), and he also appeared in the films "Superman" (1978, as himself), "Inchon" (1981), and "Irreconcilable Differences "(1984).

In a 2017 review of The Shape of Water (2017), he referred to people with disabilities as "defective creatures".

In a 2005 review of the South Korean movie Oldboy (2003), Reed wrote, "What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?".

Has maintained a long-time weekend retreat in the secluded, Litchfield County town of Roxbury, Connecticut where his neighbors have included Arthur Miller, Richard Widmark, Walter Matthau and Alexander Calder. (May 2007)

Reed authored eight books, including Do You Sleep in the Nude?, Conversations in the Raw, People Are Crazy Here, and Valentines & Vitriol.

He appeared frequently as a judge on the TV game show The Gong Show in the late 1970s.

Rex Reed guest-voiced as himself on the animated series The Critic.

Reed appeared 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.

On October 27, 1974, reviewing Frank Sinatra's performance at Madison Square Garden, Reed called him "a Woolworth rhinestone" and wrote that "his public image is uglier than a first-degree burn, his appearance is sloppier than Porky Pig; his manners are more appalling than a subway sandhog's and his ego bigger than the Sahara (the desert, not the hotel in Las Vegas, although either comparison applies). All of which might be tolerable if he could still sing. But the saddest part of all is the hardest part to face about this once-great idol now living on former glory: the grim truth is that Frank Sinatra has had it. His voice has been manhandled beyond recognition, bringing with its parched croak only a painful memory of burned-out yesterdays." Years later, Reed recalled that Sinatra "was sloppy" and "looked like he'd slept in his clothes. Sinatra was mad at me, but what did he do? He lost 25 pounds!".

Rex Reed was an American film critic, journalist, actor, and media personality.

Reed's final article was a tribute to New York Observer founder Arthur L. Carter, published in December 2025.

Reed was not given a ticket to the world premiere of Last Tango in Paris (1972) at the 1972 New York Film Festival as the festival considered him a columnist for the New York Daily News, rather than a regular film critic, as well as describing him as "(not) a friend of the festival".

Due to his father's profession (an oil company supervisor), the family moved throughout the U.S. South during Reed's childhood.

His final published film review for the New York Observer was on 24 October 2025 for Truth & Treason (2025). The review was positive.