Bill McKinney, 80, a character actor whose most recognizable performance was as a menacing hillbilly in the 1972 film Deliverance, died Dec. 1 of esophageal cancer at a hospital near his home in Van Nuys, Calif.
An adaptation of a James Dickey novel, Deliverance tells the harrowing story of a canoe trip by a group of suburbanites in the backwoods of Georgia. Mr. McKinney's character, identified in the script only as "Mountain Man," and a companion capture two of the canoers, played by Jon Voight and Ned Beatty, at gunpoint.
