Heart attack claims past Oscar winner

LOS ANGELES -- James Coburn, the lean and lanky actor who rose to fame playing villainous roles in early action films and won an Academy Award decades later as an alcoholic father in "Affliction," has died of a heart attack. He was 74. \nCoburn and his wife, Paula, were listening to music at their Beverly Hills home on Monday when he suffered the heart attack, said Hillard Elkins, the actor's longtime friend and business manager. He was pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. \nCoburn's breakthrough performances came in 1960s action flicks such as "The Magnificent Seven," "Hell is For Heroes" and "The Great Escape." \nHe then changed direction and found what was for decades his greatest fame: portraying tongue-in-cheek secret agent Derek Flint in the late 1960s James Bond spoofs "Our Man Flint" and "In Like Flint." \nIn 1998, he turned out what some would say was his finest screen performance, as the abusive, alcoholic father of Nick Nolte in "Affliction." Coburn won a best supporting actor Oscar for that film. \n"He was a hell of an actor, he had a great sense of humor and those performances will be remembered for a very long time," said Elkins. \nCoburn had recently completed two films, the just-released "The Man From Elysian Fields" and "American Gun," which Elkins said should be released soon. In the latter, Coburn's character travels the country in search of his daughter's killer. \nBorn in Laurel, Neb., on Aug. 31, 1928, Coburn grew up Southern California, making his stage debut opposite Vincent Price in a La Jolla Playhouse production of "Billy Budd." \n"Some of them you do for money, some of them you do for love," he said of the film. "This is a love child"