Armstrong was a rough-hewed character actor known for playing sheriffs, outlaws and other macho roles. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and moved to New York to attend Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio in the mid-1950s.

After meeting the writer and director Sam Peckinpah on the set of his 1960 series “The Westerner,” Mr. Armstrong became a regular in his films, playing an outspoken Christian fundamentalist in “Ride the High Country,” with Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea; a minister in “Major Dundee,” with Charlton Heston in the title role; and a vicious deputy sheriff alongside Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.”

Departing from westerns, Mr. Armstrong performed with James Earl Jones in “The Great White Hope” and with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the alien-thriller “Predator.”

Source: The New York Times