Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Actor Herbert "Cowboy" Coward, famous for his role in the 1972 film Deliverance was killed in a car crash Wednesday. He was 85.
Coward and his girlfriend Bertha Brooks were killed in a collision in Haywood County, N.C., according to multiple media reports. His two pets, a chihuahua and squirrel, also died in the crash.
Coward reportedly was hit by a 16-year-old driver. Authorities said Coward and Brooks were not wearing seatbelts, and they did not think the teen driver was speeding.
No charges were filed, and the other driver was taken to the hospital.
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Friend and co-star Burt Reynolds first met Coward in the 1960s when the two were working at the Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park in Maggie Valley, N.C. Years later, Reynolds would tap Coward to play the sadistic toothless man in John Boorman's Deliverance.
"He couldn't read or write and he stuttered, but he was a wonderful actor," Reynolds said in a 2017 interview.
Coward's illiteracy could be attributed to his most famous role. At his audition for Deliverance, he couldn't read the script Boorman had given him, so Reynolds advised him to "just do whatever flies into your head." Boorman was so impressed he hired him on the spot.
"'Cowboy, just whatever you wanna say, say it. They'll cut it out if they don't like it,'" Reynold's recalled. "He just started ad-libbing up a storm. And they kept every word he said because it was gold."
Coward said he came up with the line "squeal like a pig," uttered by Bill McKinney's character during the controversial scene in which Ned Beatty's character is sexually assaulted. Coward, meanwhile, ended up with the iconic and chilling line, "He got a real pretty mouth, ain't he?"
Coward remained in regular contact with Reynolds until his death in 2018.
"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.
