James Coburn, the classic Hollywood tough-guy who fought his way back from crippling arthritis to win an Oscar in an extraordinary comeback performance, died of a heart attack yesterday in Los Angeles, aged 74.
Coburn, together with his close friend Steve McQueen, defined a new brand of macho cool in films such as The Magnificent Seven in 1960 and The Great Escape in 1963.
"There'll never be another like him," said the actor's manager, Hillard Elkins. "When we were kids, he and I and Steve McQueen hung out together. Those two made an impression on generations past, present and future."
Mr Elkins said Coburn died at home while listening to music with his wife, Paula Murad.
"He was very happy, very calm," he told journalists. "We have lost a great star, a fine actor and a man with a marvellous sense of humour."
Mr Coburn, the son of a Nebraska mechanic and schoolteacher, made more than 100 films in a 43-year-career, many of which type-cast him as a hardened brawler, although he claimed never to have been in a real fight in his life.
He made his name in The Magnificent Seven, in which he played a knife-throwing desperado alongside Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. Coburn had few lines, but he made the most of them, and established himself as a brooding screen presence.
He went on to play Derek Flint, a spoof version of James Bond in Our Man Flint in 1966 and In Like Flint the following year.
He became a regular face in Sam Peckinpah westerns, including Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but his career sagged in the late 1970s as the market for his brand of gruff masculinity declined. A messy divorce in 1979 from his first wife, Beverly Kelly, was followed by the onset of severe rheumatoid arthritis, which at times left him unable to walk and left one hand permanently gnarled.
He made money by doing voice-overs and appearing in Japanese television advertisements.
After a decade under the shadow of the disease, Coburn claimed to have been cured by a dietary supplement pill based on sulphur.
He returned to Hollywood in the 1990s, white-haired and leonine, with cameo roles in unremarkable movies such as Young Guns II and The Nutty Professor.
But it was his portrayal of an abusive father in Affliction that turned out to be the biggest success of his career, winning him an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1999.
"Some of them you do for money, some of them you do for love," he said in his acceptance speech. "This is a love child."