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Tuesday, November 19, 2002 3:11 PM EST

Oscar Winner James Coburn Dies At 74



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Veteran Oscar-winning actor James Coburn, who played tough-guy roles in such films as Our Man Flint and The Magnificent Seven, has died.

His manager Hillard Elkins said Coburn died of a massive heart attack while listening to music with his wife at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to The Associated Press.

Coburn was pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 74.

"He was a hell of an actor, he had a great sense of humor and those performances will be remembered for a very long time," Elkins said.

Coburn won a best supporting actor Oscar with his portrait of a dissolute father opposite Nick Nolte in the 1998 drama Affliction. He won the Academy Award after overcoming a 10-year struggle with arthritis that left one hand crippled.

His last film appearances came in 2001 with a starring role opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the family comedy Snow Dogs, a pivotal voice role in the computer-animated family comedy Monsters, Inc., and in the recently released The Man From Elysian Fields.

v Coburn's last credited film role, a lead in the drama American Gun, has shown on the film festival circuit, according to the Internet Movie Database. It is yet to see a wide release.

Coburn appeared on stage in New York and in such dramatic television series as 'Studio One' and 'General Electric Theatre' in the 1950s.

He made his movie debut in Ride Lonesome in 1959, and gained the public's notice a year later when he played the knife-throwing Britt in The Magnificent Seven.

Coburn played sidekicks and villains until the late 1960s when he cashed in on the James Bond mania with the humorous spy spoofs Our Man Flint in 1966 and In Like Flint in 1967. The Flint went onto be spoofed as well, and acknowledged by Austin Powers (Mike Myers) in the Austin Powers film series.

Coburn other films included the World War II epics The Great Escape and Midway, and more recently, The Player, Maverick, Eraser and Payback.

The actor also showed the lighter side of his talents with roles in The Muppet Movie and the Eddie Murphy version of The Nutty Professor.

The actor all but disappeared from the screen in the 1980s after the onset of arthritis. That led to a crippling struggle that he eventually overcame with sulfur-based pills.

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