Actor Bill McKinney, the dark star of Deliverance, has died at the age of 80.
McKinney played the psychotic mountain man who uttered the chilling ‘squeal like a pig’ in John Boorman’s classic 1972 film. It was the role that was to define McKinney’s career despite a prolific CV that included dozens of film credits, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, and such TV shows as In the Heat of the Night, Baywatch and Walker, Texas Ranger. His credit in Deliverance, in which his character met his maker courtesy of an arrow through his chest, was simply ‘Mountain Man.’
McKinney’s death was announced on Thursday on his Facebook page. "An avid smoker for 25 years of his younger life, he died of cancer of the esophagus," the family posted. McKinney, a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, had only finished a Doritos commercial two weeks prior to his death and was also writing his biography.
"Hopefully 2012 will bring a publisher for the wild ride his life was,” the family statement read.
