Herbert Coward

Herbert Lee "Cowboy" Coward (August 21, 1938 – January 24, 2024) was an American actor. He played one of two sadistic mountain men in John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance (with Bill McKinney), and several of his lines became infamous in pop culture.

Early life Coward was born in 1938 in Haywood County, North Carolina, the ninth child of Fred and Moody Parker Coward. His mother died at a young age, so he left school and began working a variety of itinerant labor jobs to help support the family, including at an orchard and operating heavy machinery. After getting married in the early 1960s and briefly living in Raleigh, he moved back to the mountains with his wife when she became homesick.

Career After returning home, a friend offered Coward a job as an outlaw gunfighter at the Old West amusement park, Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley. While performing at the park with an assortment of acting school students working over their summer break, locals, and professional actors, an accident with a prop pistol resulted in two of his front teeth being knocked out. Known actors, including Dan Blocker, who starred on Bonanza, performed at the park, and one summer, based on his appearances on Gunsmoke, Burt Reynolds appeared there. During this time, Reynolds and Coward became friends.

Legacy Coward's performance and physical appearance in Deliverance has provided inspiration for other media, most notably the main character from the Primus video "My Name Is Mud", which also sampled lines from the film.