From Mount Airy, North Carolina. In the 50s, "yokel" roles in Onionhead, No Time for Sergeants, and A Face in the Crowd won him a TV gig: The Andy Griffith Show (a.k.a. Andy of Mayberry); he played a wise-young-country-sheriff for nearly a decade. He tried, in the 70s, to break free from typecasting, playing villains and such, finally returning to TV as wise-old-country-lawyer Matlock, now playing 9 times a day in reruns. What he does, he does well.