James Coburn

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Birthday:

31 August 1928, Laurel, Nebraska, USA

Birth Name:

James Harrison Coburn Jr.

Height:

188 cm

Lanky, charismatic and versatile actor with an amazing grin that put everyone at ease, James Coburn studied acting at UCLA, and then moved to New York to study under noted acting coach Stella Adler. After being noticed in several stage productions, Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the John Sturges mega-hit The Magnificent Seven (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgewick. Regular work now came thick and fast for Coburn, including appearing in Major Dundee (1965), the first of several films he appeared in directed by Hollywood enfant terrible Sam Peckinpah. The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the eerie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Coburn followed up in 1967 with a Flint sequel, In Like Flint (1967), and the much underrated political satire The President's Analyst (1967). The remainder of the 1960s was rather uneventful for Coburn. However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.The 1970s saw Coburn appearing again in several strong roles, starting off in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Charles Bronson in the Depression-era Hard Times (1975) and as a disenchanted German soldier on the Russian front in Peckinpah's superb Cross of Iron (1977). Towards the end of the decade, however, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which severely hampered his health and work output for many years. After conventional treatments failed, Coburn turned to a holistic therapist, and through a restructured diet program, made a definite improvement. By the 1990s he was once again appearing regularly in both film and TV productions.No one was probably more surprised than Coburn himself when he was both nominated for, and then won, the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1997 for playing Nick Nolte's abusive and alcoholic father in Affliction (1997). At 70 years of age, Coburn's career received another shot in the arm, and he appeared in another 14 films, including Snow Dogs (2002) and The Man from Elysian Fields (2001), before his death from a heart attack in November of 2002. Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card playing and enjoying fine Cuban cigars! Show less «

Actors are boring when they are not working. It's a natural condition, because they don't have anything to do. They just lay around, and tha...Show more »

Actors are boring when they are not working. It's a natural condition, because they don't have anything to do. They just lay around, and that's why so many of them get drunk. They really get to be boring people. My wife will attest to that. Show less «

[on Sam Peckinpah] Sam is, I think, a great filmmaker. Of course, he's his own worst enemy. Sam is an unusual human being, and he needs to b...Show more »

[on Sam Peckinpah] Sam is, I think, a great filmmaker. Of course, he's his own worst enemy. Sam is an unusual human being, and he needs to be treated like an unusual human being. He can create an atmosphere, whether he's drunk, sober, pissed off or in a rage, or whatever. I mean, for about three or four hours a day, he's a fucking genius. But the rest of the time he spends wallowing in a kind of emotional reaction to either good or bad memories. Show less «

[on Sam Peckinpah] He knew how to bring something out of an actor that even the actor didn't know was there. That's what an actor works for....Show more »

[on Sam Peckinpah] He knew how to bring something out of an actor that even the actor didn't know was there. That's what an actor works for. What else is there? Saying lines, or being cute, or whatever. No. People think about that. People think that acting is an easy chore. "Why, I can do that". Like they have today. Tits and ass, and this studio who's always doing his trip. Shooting and killing and blowing things up. Nah. That's junk. It's terrible junk. Commercial shit is what it is. And everybody likes it because it's easy. Nobody has to think about anything. They just sit there and sensitize themselves or desensitize themselves to anything real. And it's, "Oh boy! Wasn't he great? See that gun he had?" They're made for thirteen-, fourteen-year-old boys. Show less «

[on Steve McQueen] Steve has to prove he had a worse childhood than anybody else. Only one other person I know can compete with him and that...Show more »

[on Steve McQueen] Steve has to prove he had a worse childhood than anybody else. Only one other person I know can compete with him and that's Charles Bronson. Show less «

[on Hard Contract (1969)] I was really unhappy with that film, because the fellow that directed it was also the writer. Now, he's a brillian...Show more »

[on Hard Contract (1969)] I was really unhappy with that film, because the fellow that directed it was also the writer. Now, he's a brilliant writer, but he was a terrible director. And he did so many things that were wrong, just out of pure ego, that he drove us all up the wall. Show less «

I'm a jazz kind of actor, not rock'n'roll.

I came from dust bowl folk -- ordinary people who were stultified by the American Dream.

I meditate, I take good care of myself, sure. I don't get too involved in the details.

Sam [Sam Peckinpah] was a mad genius. He would shove you right over into the abyss and sometime he would jump right in after you.

[on winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Affliction (1997)] I finally got one right, I guess.

[on Stella Adler] Stella taught us that without style, without personality, you're just a stick out there.