Ned Beatty Trippe in "Deliverance" (1972), starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, and set in northern Georgia. Beatty's character is forced to strip at gunpoint by two mountain men who humiliate and rape him, a scene so unprecedented, horrifying and shocking that it is still referenced as a screen milestone. In 1972, he also appeared in "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean", a western with Paul Newman. In 1973, Beatty made "The Thief Who Came to Dinner", "The Last American Hero" and "White Lightning". The latter film reunited Beatty with his "Deliverance" co-star, Burt Reynolds. He also appeared in an
Ned Beatty stage actor, including a run in the London production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Brendan Fraser and Frances O'Connor, which won a Drama Desk Award. In the middle of the 2000s, Beatty appeared in the television film "The Wool Cap" (2004), with William H. Macy, and in 2005, an American independent film directed and written by Ali Selim, "Sweet Land". In March 2006, Beatty received the RiverRun International Film Festival's "Master of Cinema" Award (the highest honor of the festival), in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. By the end of the 2000s, Beatty portrayed a corrupt U.S. Senator in