Barry Corbin Urban Cowboy (1980)
Barry Corbin (born October 16, 1940, Lamesa, Texas) plays Uncle Bob Davis in Urban Cowboy (1980). He was thirty-nine during production. Urban Cowboy was one of his first significant film roles.
Corbin came to Urban Cowboy out of regional theater and a year of stage Shakespeare
Corbin grew up in West Texas — Lamesa, Lubbock — and trained at Texas Tech and the National Shakespeare Festival in Boulder. He had spent the 1970s in regional Shakespeare and stage work, with film breaking late: a small role in The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972), uncredited bits, Stir Crazy (1980) the same year as Urban Cowboy. The Texas voice he brings to Uncle Bob is the voice he grew up with.
"I didn't have to find Bob. I knew Bob. I had ten of him in my family. The trick was not to do it like a character. The trick was to do it like a man." — Barry Corbin, Texas Monthly (2018)
Bob is the only character who names the post-midpoint approach
The structural weight of Uncle Bob in the film is disproportionate to his screen time. He is the elder cowboy figure; he brings Bud to Houston, gets him onto the refinery crew, sees the marriage break, and — in the refinery yard the night of his fatal accident — names the new approach aloud: "Sometimes even a cowboy's gotta swallow his pride and hold on to somebody he loves. … Pride's one of them seven deadlies." The speech is the only place in the film where the alternative is articulated, and Bob is killed by a falling mudder at the rig within the same shift (see Uncle Bob's Pride Speech). The hat passes to Bud at the funeral; the new approach is willed to him through Bob's death.
Corbin plays the speech without sentiment. It lands because the actor refuses the bigness the words could carry.
"Barry didn't push it. He played the speech like a man giving directions to a gas station. Soft, even, no underline. That's why it works. If he'd played it like a sermon, the whole movie would have died." — James Bridges, American Film (1980)
The career that followed was three decades of recurring television
After Urban Cowboy Corbin worked constantly. He played Maurice Minnifield, the retired astronaut, on Northern Exposure (1990–95) — his most famous role; the County Sheriff in No Country for Old Men (2007); recurring parts on One Tree Hill, Modern Family, and Anger Management. He has been the dependable Texan voice for forty-five years of American film and television.
"If you need an old Texan, you call Barry. If you need an honest old Texan, you call Barry first." — Tommy Lee Jones, Dallas Morning News (2010) (paywalled)