Rex Taylor Reed (October 2, 1938 – May 12, 2026) was an American film critic, journalist, actor and media personality. Raised throughout the American South and educated at Louisiana State University, Reed moved to New York City in the early 1960s to begin his career, writing about popular culture, art, and celebrities for a number of newspapers and magazines. He became a public figure in his own right, making regular appearances on television and occasionally acting in films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 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. Reed authored eight books, including Do You Sleep in the Nude?, Conversations in the Raw, People Are Crazy Here, and Valentines & Vitriol.
Reed was born on October 2, 1938, in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Jewell (née Smith) and James M. Reed, an oil company supervisor. In an interview with The New York Times, Reed stated: "My mother came from a family of 10 in Oklahoma, her second cousins were the Dalton Gang. And when my grandfather was a little boy, he was rocked by Jesse James on his knee." Due to his father's profession, the family moved throughout the U.S. South during Reed's childhood.
He earned his journalism degree from Louisiana State University in 1960. There, he began writing film and play reviews, not only for the university's newspaper, The Daily Reveille, but also for the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Morning Advocate.
Reed moved to New York City after graduating from LSU, hoping to find success as an actor. Instead, he was hired to work at the publicity department of 20th Century Fox. In 1969, he said his job there was to "write those puffy things about Elvis Presley and—you know—Fabian, and tell everybody how great they were when I wouldn't be caught dead seeing their movies myself. [...] Cleopatra came along and rocked the company financially. We were saving on rubber bands and paying Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to float down the Nile while everybody back at Fox was taking salary cuts, and I was the first one to go—the little guy at the $75 salary, the most dispensable item in the company. I was fired." Later in the decade, he provided many interviews for The New York Times and New York, which at the time was the Sunday magazine of the New York Herald Tribune. In 1966, the year in which the Herald Tribune folded, he was hired as one of the music critics for HiFi/Stereo Review (now Sound & Vision), where he remained until 1973.
Before becoming a film critic for The New York Observer in 1987, Reed was a film critic for Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, and Women's Wear Daily. For thirteen years, he was an arts critic for the New York Daily News, and for five years was the film critic for the New York Post. He was briefly laid off from the Observer in 2017 but was subsequently rehired and continue to work there until his death in 2026. In addition, Reed served on the jury at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971, and the 33rd Venice International Film Festival in 1972. Reed was not given a ticket to the world premiere of Last Tango in Paris 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".
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!"
In 1986, after Marlee Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Children of a Lesser God, Reed wrote that Matlin had won because of a "pity vote", and that a deaf person playing a deaf character was not really acting.
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. This is what happened in 2017, when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner of Best Picture instead of the true recipient, Moonlight. Roger Ebert said that Reed's conspiracy theories were false and unfair to Tomei, and that Reed owed her an apology.
In a 2005 review of the South Korean movie Oldboy, 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?" The Village Voice, which reported that "online forums erupted in protest" at the review, then mocked Reed by imagining him applying similar logic to films from other countries.
In a 2013 review of Identity Thief, Reed made several references to Melissa McCarthy's weight, referring to her as "tractor-sized", "humongous", "obese", and a "hippo". The review sparked backlash from prominent Hollywood figures and several notable media outlets. Film critic Richard Roeper said, "This just smacks of mean-spirited name-calling in lieu of genuine criticism." The review was referenced at the 85th Academy Awards in February 2013 by host Seth MacFarlane, who joked that Reed would review Adele for singing "Skyfall" at the ceremony. In a column for HuffPost, Candy Spelling likened Reed's review to bullying. Reed stood by his comments and stated his objection to the use of serious health problems such as obesity as comedy talking points. He dismissed the outrage as being orchestrated for publicity, but praised McCarthy for not getting involved in the matter, calling her "completely classy". McCarthy would later respond in a June 2013 interview with The New York Times, expressing surprise that the review was published, stating, "I felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate. I just thought, that’s someone who’s in a really bad spot, and I am in such a happy spot. I laugh my head off every day with my husband and my kids". In a 2017 review of The Shape of Water, he referred to people with disabilities as "defective creatures".
In his later years, Reed's views were often at odds with younger critics. While he was criticised for offensive comments in reviews, he claimed that young critics often lacked knowledge about film history and black-and-white-films. Reed also claimed that American culture saw a decline during his lifetime: "I grew up when things weren't mediocre. Now they are."
Reed was a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. Reed's final review, published on October 24, 2025, was for the film Truth & Treason. His final article overall, published on December 16 of that year, was a tribute to the New York Observer founder Arthur L. Carter.