Biography

When director John Boorman was having trouble finding a talented actor who was also toothless for a key role in Deliverance (1972), co-star Burt Reynolds remembered Coward from having worked with him in a Wild West show in Maggie Valley, NC. Coward--who was not an actor and was toothless and illiterate--arrived for his audition looking so perfect for the part of a rural mountain man that Boorman first thought Reynolds had prompted him on how to dress.

When director John Boorman explained to Coward that one of the things his character was going to do was to rape a man, Coward replied, "I've done worse."

Started acting at the Wild West Show called "Ghost Town in the Sky" in Maggie Valley, NC , in 1961. He played a "Grandpappy" who came to town to avenge his son's death. There he confronted the Marshal (Harry Valentine) and Digger the Undertaker, who buried Grandpappy's son. Digger was played by Robert Doyle Teaster. Actor Dean Teaster is Teaster's son. Coward, Harry Valentine and Doyle Teaster acted with Dan Blocker, Tony Dow, Clu Gulager, Paul Fix and Burt Reynolds. "Ghost Town in the Sky" finally closed in 2003. During that time, the above original Ghost Town Gunfighters did live theater in the streets every hour.

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.

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.