James Coburn

James Harrison Coburn III was born August 31, 1928, and built a career on physical ease and a voice like gravel over ice. Through the 1960s he anchored Westerns and action films - The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, Charade - and became the New Hollywood's definition of "cool," all coiled menace and dry wit. He led the Flint spy comedies, survived Sam Peckinpah's bloodiest frames in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Cross of Iron, and kept working when arthritis bent his hands into claws. In 1998 he took a supporting role in Affliction, playing an abusive father with such lived-in cruelty that the Academy gave him the statue he'd never chased. He died November 18, 2002, four years after the win and 45 years deep into the work.