Coburn was born on August 31, 1928 in Laurel, Nebraska, the son of James Coburn, Jr. and Milet Johanson; his father was of Scots-Irish ancestry and his mother was an immigrant from Sweden. The elder Coburn had a garage business that was destroyed by the Great Depression. Coburn himself was raised in Compton, California, where he attended Compton Junior College. In 1950, he enlisted in the United States Army, in which he served as a truck driver and an occasional disc jockey on an Army radio station in Texas. Coburn also narrated Army training films in Mainz, Germany. Coburn attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting alongside Jeff Corey and Stella Adler, and later made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. Coburn was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial in which he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds, while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part. Coburn’s film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott western Ride Lonesome. Coburn also appeared in dozens of television roles including, with Roberts, several episodes of NBC’s Bonanza. Coburn appeared twice each on two other NBC westerns 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. During the 1960 to 1961 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. Coburn also made two guest appearances on CBS’s Perry Mason, both times as the murder victim in “The Case of the Envious Editor” and “The Case of the Angry Astronaut.” In 1962, he portrayed the role of Col. Briscoe in the episode “Hostage Child” on CBS’s Rawhide.

Coburn became well known in the 1960s and the 1970s for his tough-guy roles in numerous action and western films. He first appeared with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson in the John Sturges film, The Magnificent Seven, and with Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson in The Great Escape, another Sturges film. Coburn played the part of a villainous Texan in the successful Charade (1963). He was then cast as a glib naval officer in Paddy Chayefsky’s The Americanization of Emily. Coburn was signed to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. His performance as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965) gained him much notice. In 1966, Coburn became a genuine star following the release of the James Bond parody film Our Man Flint. The following year, he was voted the twelfth biggest star in Hollywood. 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. Coburn teamed with director Sam Peckinpah for the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which he played Pat Garrett. The two had worked together in 1965 on Major Dundee. In 1973 Coburn was voted the 23rd most popular star in Hollywood. Peckinpah and Coburn turned next to Cross of Iron, a critically acclaimed war epic that performed poorly in the United States but was a huge hit in Europe. Peckinpah and Coburn remained close friends until Peckinpah’s death in 1984. In 1973, Coburn was among the featured celebrities dressed in prison gear on the cover of the album Band on the Run made by Paul McCartney and his band Wings. Coburn returned to television in 1978 to star in a three-part mini-series version of a Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Dain Curse, tailoring his character to bear a physical resemblance to the author. During that same year as a spokesman for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, he was paid $500,000 to promote its new product in television advertisements by saying only two words: “Schlitz. Light.”

Because of his severe rheumatoid arthritis, Coburn appeared in very few films during the 1980s, yet continued working until his death in 2002. He spent much of his life writing songs with British singer-songwriter Lynsey de Paul and working on television series, such as Darkroom. He claimed to have healed himself with pills containing the dietary supplement methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). Coburn returned to film in the 1990s and 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. Coburn’s performance in Affliction eventually earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In addition, he provided the voice of Henry J. Waternoose III in Disney/Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. Coburn died of a heart attack on November 18, 2002 while listening to music at his Beverly Hills home. He was survived by his second wife, Paula (née Murad), son James IV and a stepdaughter. Coburn was cremated, his ashes were interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery and marked by a stone bench inscribed with his name. At the time of his death, Coburn was the voice of the “Like a Rock” Chevrolet television ad campaign.