[3] He played supporting roles in The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, The Great Escape, Charade and Hard Times as well as the lead role in Our Man Flint and its sequel In Like Flint, The President's Analyst, Duck, You Sucker!, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Cross of Iron.

[7] He attended Los Angeles City College,[8] where he studied acting with fellow actor Jeff Corey under Stella Adler’s tutelage, and later made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Herman Melville's Billy Budd.

He was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial, where he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds[10] while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part.

[11] Coburn's film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott Western Ride Lonesome.

"[13] These included several episodes of NBC's Bonanza and appearing twice each on three other NBC Westerns: Laramie with Robert Fuller,Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson, one episode in the role of Butch Cassidy; and The Restless Gun with John Payne in "The Pawn" and "The Way Back", the latter segment alongside Bonanza's Dan Blocker.

Coburn's third film was a major breakthrough for him, as the knife-wielding Britt in The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges for the Mirisch Company.

During the 1960–61 season, Coburn co-starred with Ralph Taeger and Joi Lansing in the NBC adventure/drama series Klondike, set in the Alaskan gold rush town of Skagway.

When Klondike was cancelled, Taeger and Coburn were regrouped as detectives in Mexico in NBC's equally short-lived Acapulco.

He followed it with another war film with McQueen, The Great Escape (1963), directed by Sturges for the Mirisches, where Coburn played an Australian POW.

[15] Coburn had another excellent supporting role as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965), directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston.

At Fox, he was second-billed in the pirate film A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), supporting Anthony Quinn in the lead role.

[16] Producer Saul David commented, Coburn "is undoubtedly one of the most interesting looking actors in the business today.

I would describe him as a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Jean Paul Belmondo - a true descendant of that bygone generation of character actors who became leading men by accident... Coburn has a fantastic effect on women filmgoers and I think it's because ladies go more for masculinity and charm than prettiness in a male star.

(1966), a wartime comedy from Blake Edwards, which was made for the Mirisches; Coburn was top billed although the lead was Dick Shawn.

Coburn tried a change of pace, an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) directed by Sidney Lumet, but the film was not popular.

[19] In 1971, Coburn starred in the Zapata Western Duck, You Sucker!, with Rod Steiger and directed by Sergio Leone, as an Irish explosives expert and revolutionary who has fled to Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century.

[20] Duck You Sucker, also called A Fistful of Dynamite, was not as highly regarded as Leone's four previous Westerns, but was hugely popular in Europe, especially France.

He then starred in a series of thrillers: Harry in Your Pocket (1974), the debut feature from Mission Impossible creator Bruce Geller, and The Internecine Project (1975).

Coburn began to drop back down the credit list: he was third billed in writer-director Richard Brooks' film Bite the Bullet (1975) behind Gene Hackman and Candice Bergen.

Coburn returned to television in 1978 to star in a three-part miniseries version of a Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Dain Curse, tailoring his character to bear a physical resemblance to the author.

According to Mr. T, Coburn was slated to play the Hannibal character on the hit television series The A-Team, but NBC changed their mind and went with George Peppard.

[29] Coburn also portrayed Dwight Owen Barnes in the PC video game C.E.O., developed by Artdink as a spin-off of its A-Train series.

Though the MSM did not cure Coburn's arthritis, it did relieve his pain, allowing him to move more freely and resume his career.

[33] Coburn resumed his film career in the 1990s, where he appeared in supporting roles in Young Guns II, Hudson Hawk, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Maverick, Eraser, The Nutty Professor, Affliction, and Payback.

He kept the car at his Beverly Hills-area home, where it was often serviced by Max Balchowsky, who also worked on the suspension and frame modifications on the Mustang GTs used in the filming of McQueen's Bullitt.

[39] In spite of his severe rheumatoid arthritis, Coburn was a martial arts student and a friend of fellow actor Bruce Lee.

[44] In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, critic David Thomson states that "Coburn is a modern rarity: an actor who projects lazy, humorous sexuality.

[45] Film critic Pauline Kael remarked on Coburn's unusual characteristics, stating that "he looked like the child of the liaison between Lt. Pinkerton and Madame Butterfly".