Innate inside Laurel, Nebraska, Coburn became famous when a "tough guy" within a kind of films, including: the western The Magnificent Seven (1960), the World War II POW drama The Great Escape (1963, in which he played an Australian airman, however while forgoing a required accent), a U.S. soldier around WW II in The Americanization of Emily (1964), the spy picture show Our Man Flint (1966) and its sequel In Like Flint (1967), the Sergio Leone 'spaghetti western' Duck Busy people Sucker the.k.the. A Fistful of Dynamite (1971), the Depression-era street fight film Hard Times (1975), and Sam Peckinpah's war movie Cross of Iron (1977). He was particularly amercement around Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); and limited his "tough guy" image around sarcasm & comedies, like What Did You Do in the War Daddy? (1966), Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), Waterhole # 3 (1967) ''The President's Analyst (1967), and Duffy (1968).

Ascribable severe rheumatoid arthritis, he appear around super couple of films when you took a 1980s. He claimed to stand healed himself by using pills containing sulfur, and returned to screen in the 1990s.

He so appeared inside moving picture like Young Guns II (1990), The Nutty Professor (1996), The Cherokee Kid (a 1996 TV motion picture), & Maverick (1994). For his appearance when a abusive father of protagonist Nick Nolte in Affliction'' he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1998.

He died suddenly in November 18, 2002 from a heart attack at the age of 74.