Barry Corbin

Barry Corbin
Peg Phillips and Barry Corbin, 1993
Born	Leonard Barrie Corbin October 16, 1940 (1940-10-16) (age 71) Lamesa, Dawson County, Texas, USA
Alma mater	Texas Tech University
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1960s-present
Spouse	Marie Elyse Soape (unknown) Susan Berger (unknown-1992)

Leonard Barrie Corbin, known as Barry Corbin (born October 16, 1940), is an American actor with more than one hundred film, television and video game credits.^[1]

Early life

Corbin was born in Lamesa, the seat of Dawson County, south of Lubbock in west Texas. He graduated from Monterey High School. He is the son of the former Alma LaMerle Scott (1918–1994), a teacher, and Kilmer Blaine Corbin, Sr. (1919–1993), a school principal, a judge and a Democratic member of the Texas State Senate for two terms from 1949-1957.^[2] Corbin studied theatre arts at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He also served in the United States Marines.^[3]

Career

Corbin began his career as a Shakespearean actor in the 1960s, but today he is more likely to be seen in the role of the local sheriff, military leader, or some other authority figure, though on occasion, he has effectively portrayed murderous villains as well. To moviegoers he is well remembered as General Beringer in WarGames, John Travolta's uncle in Urban Cowboy, co-starring with Clint Eastwood in Any Which Way You Can, or Roscoe Brown, who was July Johnson's bumbling deputy, in the acclaimed western Lonesome Dove.

He also had a role in 2008's Oscar-winning film No Country for Old Men.

From 1979 until 1984 he appeared in several episodes of "Dallas (TV series)" as Sheriff Fenton Washburn. In 1983, Corbin co-starred in the famed television mini-series The Thorn Birds. Corbin played Mary Carson's stockman "Pete", who teaches the Cleary's sons how to shear sheep on their aunt's gigantic sheep station Drogheda, in Australia. In 1983-1984, Corbin played Merit Sawyer in the NBC television series Boone. Corbin's role was that of a stern father to the young actor Tom Byrd, who played Boone Sawyer, an aspiring singer. The program was set in rural Tennessee during the 1950s and was created by Earl Hamner, who had great success earlier with CBS's The Waltons. From 1990 to 1995, Corbin portrayed former astronaut Maurice Minnifield on CBS's Northern Exposure, for which he received an Emmy nomination.^[4]

In 1994, Corbin narrated the acclaimed TBS documentary MoonShot, telling the story of the 1960s space race from the first-person viewpoint of Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton. In 2007, He played the character Clay Johnson, father of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on The Closer series.^[4]

From 2003-2008, Corbin was a cast member of the teenage drama series One Tree Hill, where he portrayed a basketball coach for the Tree Hill Ravens.^[4] Corbin lost most of his hair in the 1990s due to alopecia areata. Since then, he has played various roles with a shaved head, wearing a cowboy hat, or occasionally wearing a full toupee. Corbin is the signature voice of radio station KPLX in Fort Worth, Texas, and has also voiced trailers and promos for CMT and various other country radio stations.^[5]

Personal life

Many of his films have been westerns, and Corbin's proficiency in the saddle is no act. He played a corrupt sheriff in the 2001 Tom Selleck Turner Network Television film Crossfire Trail. Much of his spare time is spent riding horses and tending to cattle on his small Texas ranch near Fort Worth. He volunteered his time to charity rodeos for many years. In 2006, he participated in the Lubbock centennial.^[6] Corbin has been quoted as being an avid enthusiast of riding horses.^[7]

Corbin lives on the ranch with his daughter, Shannon Ross (born 1965) and grandchildren. Corbin found Shannon in June 1991, when she was twenty-six. Shannon had been adopted as an infant; her birth mother, who had an affair with Corbin, gave up the child through the Methodist Mission Home in San Antonio, without having told Corbin of the pregnancy. Corbin has three sons: Bernard (born 1970), Jim (born 1979), and Christopher (born 1982). He and his second wife, Susan Berger, divorced in 1992.^[3]

In 2009, Corbin was inducted in the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. A recent painting of Corbin has been placed at the museum exhibit.^[8] In September, 2011, Corbin was given a Life Time Achievement Award by the Estes Park Film Festival, in Estes Park, Colorado.^[9]

Filmography

Movies

• The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1981) (See Gregorio Cortez.)
• Feed The Fish
• That Evening Sun
• Wyvern
• Beer For My Horses
• Firefighter (film)
• Ghost Dad (film)
• In The Valley of Elah
• No Country for Old Men
• The Hot Spot
• Crossfire Trail
• Held Up
• Career Opportunities
• Who's Harry Crumb?
• Nothing in Common
• Bitter Harvest
• WarGames
• Stir Crazy
• The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
• Critters 2: The Main Course
• Six Pack
• Urban Cowboy
• Any Which Way You Can
• Moon Shot (narrated)
• My Science Project
• Ben 10: Alien Swarm
• Monte Walsh
• Solo
• The Grand
• Dukes Of Hazzard (film)

Television

• Celebrity Poker Showdown
• Dallas
• Northern Exposure - Maurice Minnifield
• One Tree Hill - The Great Coach Whitey Durham
• Reba - J.V McKinney
• The A-Team - Kinkaid
• Lonesome Dove miniseries - Roscoe Brown
• The Thorn Birds miniseries
• M*A*S*H - Sgt. Joe Vickers in episode "Your Retention, Please" (episode 907)
• Murder She Wrote
• Walker, Texas Ranger - Crowder
• Understanding - narrator for "Traffic" episode
• The Closer - Clay Johnson
• King of the Hill - Fire Chief
• Psych - Bamford
• The Drew Carey Show - Mr. Pheifer
• Hidden Places(Hallmark movie) - Sheriff
• Hope Ranch (TV film) - Shorty

Computer games

• Red Alert: Retaliation as General Ben Carville. In the sequel, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, he reprised this character with a much larger role. The game also featured a number of cinematics spoofing his role in WarGames.
• Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive as Jackson Cross - An NSA operative who kidnaps and threatens to kill the main character in his pursuit of an alien artifact.

See also

	Biography portal
	United States Marine Corps portal

References

External links

• Official website
• Barry Corbin at the Internet Movie Database
• Barry Corbin at AllRovi
• Barry Corbin cast bio on The WB