By Photo: Carl Young / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Barry Corbin has spent more than four decades as one of the most recognizable character actors in American film and television. Many of his best-known parts are Western ones: ranchers, lawmen and old hands whose dry humor comes from a real place.
West Texas roots
Corbin was born on October 16, 1940, in Lamesa, Texas, in the cotton and ranch country south of Lubbock. He studied theater at Texas Tech University and worked on stage before moving into film in the late 1970s. Away from the camera he is known as a horseman, and that ease around livestock shows in his roles.
The roles
- Urban Cowboy (1980). His first widely seen film role, as Uncle Bob, alongside John Travolta.
- WarGames (1983). Not a Western, but his General Beringer, a blunt-spoken officer, made him a familiar face.
- Lonesome Dove (1989). In the celebrated miniseries from Larry McMurtry’s novel, he played Roscoe Brown, the deputy sent out to find a runaway sheriff.
- Northern Exposure (1990 to 1995). As Maurice Minnifield, a former astronaut and self-made businessman in a small Alaska town, he became a familiar face to a new generation of viewers.
- No Country for Old Men (2007). In the Coen brothers’ film, he played Ellis, the retired lawman whose short scene near the end carries much of the film’s meaning.
He has also appeared in many television Westerns and in modern rural dramas, often playing men of the land who have seen too much to be surprised.
Recognition
Corbin’s work in Westerns has been honored by Western heritage organizations, and he remains in demand in his eighties. For more on the screen West, see our pieces on Gunsmoke and Tom Selleck’s Westerns.
Records and reports used here: Studio and network production credits; Television Academy, Emmy nomination records; Texas Tech University alumni records.
