James Best
Birthday: 1926-07-26 | Place of Birth: Powderly, Kentucky, USAFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Best (born Jewel Franklin Guy; July 26, 1926 – April 6, 2015) was an American television, film, character, voice, and stage actor, as well as a writer, director, acting coach, artist, college professor, and musician, whose career spanned seven decades of television. He appeared as a guest on various country music and talk shows. One of the busiest actors in Hollywood, who began his contract career with Universal Studios in 1949, where he met unfamiliar actors Julie Adams, Piper Laurie, Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. Best's long career began in films in 1950. He appeared primarily in Westerns, playing opposite Audie Murphy in Kansas Raiders (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952) and The Quick Gun (1964), Raymond Massey in Seven Angry Men (1955), George Montgomery in Last of the Badman (1957), Frank Lovejoy in Cole Younger Gunfighter (1958), and Randolph Scott in Ride Lonesome (1959). He also starred in the science fiction cult movie, The Killer Shrews (1959) and its sequel, Return of the Killer Shrews (2012). He is most known for playing bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in the action/comedy Dukes of Hazzard, a role that he revised in The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! (1997) as his character was now "boss" of Hazzard County as well as sheriff, and again in The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood (2000).
Known For
Acting
Role
as Paddy Kerrigan
as Thorne Sherman
as McClancy
as Hank Larson
as Rosco P. Coltrane
as Wilbur Johnson
as Boss / Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
as Rosco Coltrane (voice)
as Rosco P. Coltrane
as Cully
as Texan
as Pellegrino
as Sheriff Bert Hamilton
as Rev. Emory Neill
as Henry Burroughs
as Drew
as Sergeant Carnavan
as Dr. Ben Mizer
as Ralph Elkins
as Scotty Wade
as Stuart
as Jericho Larkin
as Niergaard
as Billy John
as Sam Mullen
as Sgt. David Brent
as Thorne Sherman
as Kit Caswell
as Rhidges
as Kermit
