James Coburn’s ‘Hawk’ Return Follows a Physical Recovery Too

That killer smile, distinctive voice and those steely blue eyes are still the same. But times have changed.

Twenty-five years ago, James Coburn was one of the good guys as the suave womanizing spy Derek Flint in the classic action-comedy “Our Man Flint” and the 1967 sequel, “In Like Flint.”

But in “Hudson Hawk,” this summer’s Bruce Willis extravaganza, he is on the wrong side of the law. He plays Hudson’s nemesis, George Kaplan, a government agent gone bad and the leader of a group of dimwitted thugs called The Candy Bars.

“It’s a weird movie,” Coburn, 62, says, breaking into a hearty chuckle. “That’s what attracted me to it.”

“Hudson Hawk” turned out to be so weird no one quite knew how to act or direct it. “There were a lot of changes. This was in order to get through some of the scenes. Some of the scenes were overwritten. There was gag after gag after gag and a little bit of information and then gag, gag, gag. It was very strange and it was very hard work.”

The last 13 years have been tough going for Coburn. After making the CBS miniseries “The Dain Curse” in 1978, Coburn became afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, and has since been more heard--in numerous TV commercial voice-overs--than seen.

“I am 85% to 90% back,” Coburn says. “For a long time I could hardly walk. I didn’t know what it was. It was in my legs and it got worse. The doctor said, ‘We don’t know how to cure it. You just have to learn to live with it.’ And living with it was really going to be a drag.”

So our man Coburn tried alternative cures, including electronic medicine and fasting. “I stopped taking all the medications the doctor gave me and took aspirin,” he says. “A friend of mine, actor R.G. Armstrong, came over and gave me a deep-tissue massage every day for 10 months. That really saved my life. I didn’t have any energy at all. Now, I work out every other day and eat proper foods.”