Leonard Barrie "Barry" Corbin (born October 16, 1940) is an
American actor with more than one hundred
film,
television and
video game credits.
Biography
Career
Corbin began his life 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.
In 1983-1984, Corbin played Merit Sawyer in the
NBC television series Boone. Corbin's role was that of 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.
[Barry Corbin from The Internet Movie Database] 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 Lee Johnson on
The Closer series.
