Former Child Actor Recalls Burt Reynolds Slipping Him Hundred-Dollar Bills

Former child actor Norman Golden II is looking back on his time with his late Cop and a Half co-star, Burt Reynolds, revealing how the legendary actor made sure he was taken care of on set.

Golden, who was 8 at the time he filmed the 1993 movie, told PEOPLE that he performed several of his own stunts in the cop comedy, joking that while it wasn’t exactly safe for him to be doing any stunt work at that age, “It was the ’90s.”

To compensate his co-star for the extra work, Golden said the Gunsmoke actor gave him a $100 bill for every stunt he performed.

“I probably shouldn’t have been doing [the stunts],” Golden said. “Burt understood, because he’d been in the business for years at that point. He wasn’t going to overstep, but he also wanted to make sure that I was safe and taken care of. He knew I wasn’t probably getting compensated well enough to be performing and doing the things that I was doing.”

The Smokey and the Bandit actor was “so generous,” Golden gushed, also giving him four custom pairs of cowboy boots, a video camera and other electronics during their time working together in addition to advice on how to avoid the pitfalls of working in the entertainment business.

Despite Reynolds’ superstardom, Golden told PEOPLE he was never starstruck by his co-star, as he “had no idea” who he was. “If it had been, let’s say Eddie Murphy, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger, I obviously knew who those guys were,” the former actor, now 41, said. “But Burt, I’m like, ‘I don’t know who this guy is.’ My parents knew him. So they’re all like, ‘Wow.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I guess.’”

Golden’s career in Hollywood wasn’t a lengthy one, as he left Hollywood to focus on school after starring in the TV miniseries Moby Dick when he was 14. He also noted that the roles that were becoming available to him as a young man weren’t in line with the career he wanted to pursue.

“I wasn’t Macaulay Culkin, if you know what I mean. So the opportunities that were afforded to me were a little bit different,” he said. “It was a smaller pool of opportunities and roles that were available to me that I was up against with other kids that was in my same demographic, like [child actors] Brandon Hammond or Arjay Smith or any of those guys.”

Now, Golden works in tech and is launching the company Golden Path to help people in the creative fields deal with sudden fame, especially child actors. “There’s an adjustment period that a lot of people don’t talk about,” he said. “I want to give artists the kind of support that I wish that I could have had, or at least my parents could have had.”