Herbert “Cowboy” Coward, best known for his role as the Toothless Man in “Deliverance,” has died at the age of 85.
Coward was killed in a car accident, according to local news outlets WLOS and FOX Carolina, citing North Carolina State Highway Patrol officials.
He died on Wednesday in Haywood County, NC, when his Nissan, which was exiting a parking lot, was hit by a pickup truck driven by a 16-year-old.
His girlfriend, Bertha Brooks, 78, and his pet chihuahua and pet squirrel were also killed in the crash. According to WLOS, authorities said Coward and Brooks were not wearing seat belts.
The unnamed 16-year-old driver was hospitalized, but no charges have been filed because investigators determined no crime was committed, according to TMZ.
Coward was best known for playing the sinister toothless hillbilly in the 1972 thriller “Deliverance” starring Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight.
Born in 1938 in Haywood County, NC, Coward was the youngest of nine children, and he was illiterate.
He found work in a Wild West-themed amusement park, where he earned his “Cowboy” nickname.
His famous gaptoothed smile originated when his front teeth were knocked out by a pistol during a staged fight at the park.
“In the old days when you fell off the roof, you had to know how many times to roll to hit the ground. There weren’t [any] airbags. Just solid ground down there,” he told Smoky Mountain News in 2019. “So, you had a rough time a-doin’ it.”
The Oscar-nominated thriller “Deliverance” followed four Atlanta businessmen on a trip in the Georgia wilderness, where they meet hostile locals — including mountain men who rape them and tell them to “squeal like a pig.”
Coward’s character and his hillbilly sidekick (played by Bill McKinney) were the perpetrators of this crime in the infamous disturbing scene.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Coward first met Reynolds — who died in 2018 at age 82 — in the 1960s, when Reynolds worked as a stuntman.
Over a decade later, when he was making “Deliverance,” Reynolds recommended Coward to play the villain.
“He couldn’t read or write and he stuttered, but he was a wonderful actor,” Reynolds said in a cast reunion video in 2017.
McKinney’s character does the crime, but Coward’s character is also there, and Coward said he came up with the iconic “squeal like a pig” line.
“Bill was asking me what we should do with him and I said, ‘Make him squeal like a pig. Make him squeal like Pa’s old pig.’ I said it a few times, but it didn’t make it in the movie,” he recalled in 2017.
McKinney’s character ultimately said the line, while Coward said the different chilling line, “He got a real pretty mouth, ain’t he?”
When Coward’s character was killed and his body was lowered into a river, he did the stunt himself.
“They had a crane up there with a cable and harness where the cameras wouldn’t pick it up and lowered me down that big cliff,” he said, according to the outlet. “It took about half an hour to let me down and I was hurting from that harness digging into me, but I enjoyed doing it.”
In a 2006 interview, “Deliverance” director John Boorman said, “Coward never made a film before, but he looked exactly right for the part. I found out later that he has a natural talent that doesn’t need much direction.”
In a 2014 interview with the Mountaineer, Coward recalled that Reynolds advised him to “act real mean” during his audition.
“When I met the director, he said he was glad I dressed for the part, so I yelled at him and told him I was wearing my regular clothes and shoved him against the wall real mean,” Coward said.
He only appeared in two other movies — “Ghost Town: The Movie” in 2007 and an episode of “Hillbilly Blood” in 2013. According to the Mountaineer, he had other offers from Hollywood but turned them down to stay in Haywood County with his family.
Nevertheless, he remained a lifelong friend of Burt Reynolds.
“Burt said he didn’t have but three friends — real friends — and I was one of them because I never asked him for nothing,” he said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Locally, Coward was reportedly known as “the squirrel man” for his pet squirrel that he took everywhere.
He was also usually spotted around wearing bib overalls, a flannel shirt, a hat decorated with bear claws and a rattlesnake hatband with a wild hog tail.
