JAMES COBURN / ACTORConfident, opinionated, tough as...

JAMES COBURN / ACTOR

Confident, opinionated, tough as nails--yet suave. It’s the trademark persona we’ve seen from James Coburn in dozens of movies, from 1959’s “Ride Lonesome” through last year’s “Eraser,” and now in the satirical HBO movie “Second Civil War,” the new feature “Keys to Tulsa” and in Paul Schrader’s “Affliction,” which just finished shooting. At 68, Coburn reveals tastes mixing earthiness and swank.

MOVIE HE WAS IN BUT WISHES YOU WOULDN’TRENT: “ ‘A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die’--awful. An Italian macarooni western. Those are the ones you tend to forget.”

MOVIE HE WASN’T IN THAT HE WANTS YOU TO RENT: “Robert Altman’s ‘Kansas City’! Now there’s a tape you can rent and enjoy.”

CLOTHESHORSE: “When I do a contemporary film, I get the clothes I wore in the film. That way you get it tailored and have it broken in by the time you go home.”

PET PEEVE: “Focus groups. They ask a bunch of amateurs how to make the movie! They don’t ask the director or cinematographer or anyone, the ones who know. That’s ridiculous.”

FILMS THAT DID IT RIGHT: “Once in a while things like ‘The English Patient,’ ‘Shine,’ ‘Fargo’ or ‘Sling Blade’ slip through. Maybe that will teach [studios] a thing or two.”

HEP CAT: “I listen to [jazz station] KLON or [classical] KKGO. I’m a jazz baby. Catalina’s Bar & Grill, the Jazz Bakery is cool.”

INNER PEACE: “I’m reading a book by qi gong master Hong Liu, “Mastering Miracles: The Healing Art of Qi Gong as Taught by a Master,” about qi gong exercises and how to develop qi [similar to tai chi].”

OUTER PEACE: “I don’t go to bars [to get into fights]. I take my wife, Paula, with me. She’ll protect me from that kind of [expletive].”

EATS: “I like Matsuhisa, the Japanese-Peruvian restaurant on La Cienega. Black cod is a favorite of mine, and the tuna sushi with caviar is extremely good.”

SMOKES: “You can’t find a good cigar. I’ve smoked them for 25 years--now the models smoke them. If you want a good one it has to be a Havana cigar.”

TYPECASTING: “Been playing too many rich old men lately. Someone who’s very entrenched in his ways, but the kids always think they know better. The youth are supposed to know more than the people who built the country! . . . A lot of knowledge but little experience is dangerous.”