Sam Elliott

Samuel Pack "Sam" Elliott (born August 9, 1944) is an American actor. His rangy physique, thick horseshoe moustache, and deep, resonant voice (with a Western twang/drawl) match the iconic image of a cowboy or rancher, and he has often been cast in such roles.

Early life

Sam Elliott was born in Sacramento, California, to a physical training instructor mother and a father who worked for the Department of the Interior.^[1] He moved from California to Oregon with his family during his teenage years, where he graduated from David Douglas High School in Portland. He attended Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, where he completed a two-year program and was cast as one of the leads in Guys and Dolls. The local newspaper suggested that Elliott should be a professional actor. Soon after, Elliott declared he was going to Hollywood to become a star. Elliott is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Cal State L.A.. He worked in construction while studying acting in Los Angeles. Elliott also lived for a short time in Princeton, West Virginia.

Career

Elliott began his career as a character actor; his appearance and bearing were ideally suited to Westerns. One of his first film roles was as 'Card Player #2' in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

In 1970-71, Sam Elliott starred as Doug Robert in the hit TV series Mission: Impossible, and played the lead character Sam Damon in Once an Eagle, an NBC miniseries during the 1976-77 season. In 1979, he played the oldest brother in the made-for-TV miniseries The Sacketts, also starring Tom Selleck, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Glenn Ford, Ruth Roman, Mercedes McCambridge, Jack Elam, and Gilbert Roland, among others. He later played a wife killer in the miniseries Murder in Texas (1981) and A Death in California (1986). He has made guest appearances on shows such as Felony Squad, Gunsmoke, Lancer and Hawaii Five-O and has been featured in many TV movies, including Buffalo Girls (1995) in which he played Wild Bill Hickok. In 1998, Elliot was named the grand marshal of the Calgary Stampede parade and rode in the procession before 300,000 spectators. He has also starred in Road House (1989) with Patrick Swayze and played Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993), which starred Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer.

Elliott co-starred in We Were Soldiers, which is based on the book We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, portraying Sgt. Maj. Basil L. Plumley. He also played General John Buford in the 1993 film Gettysburg, which is based on the book The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.

Elliott played "The Stranger", a character narrating the story of The Big Lebowski (1998). In 2005 he appeared in Thank You For Smoking where he played a former Marlboro Man advertisement cowboy who has developed lung-cancer. In 2009, Elliott had a small role in Up In The Air in which he portrayed the Captain of an American Airlines jet.

Elliott has performed voice-over narration for various commercials. He has lent his voice to campaigns for Dodge, IBM, Kinney Drugs, Union Pacific, and, most notably, the American Beef Council, succeeding Robert Mitchum in the latter. Since late 2007, Elliott has done voice-overs for Coors beer, bringing his deep, rich voice and "western" appeal to the brand brewed in Colorado. In 2010, Dodge hired Elliott to do the voice-over for their Ram Heavy Duty truck commercial. He is also the new voice for Smokey Bear ("Only YOU can prevent wildfires"). Coincidentally, Elliott and "Smokey" share the same birthday (the U.S. Forest Service recognizes this as Smokey's "birthdate"). He lent his voice to "Buster" (a.k.a. Chupadogra) in Marmaduke (2010). He also narrated the opening of the Super Bowl introductions, in 2011 Super Bowl in Arlington, Texas. He has a supporting role in the forthcoming film The Company You Keep.

Personal life

Elliott married actress Katharine Ross in 1984. Although Ross starred in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which Elliott had a very small role, the two did not meet and begin dating until 1978 when they both starred with Roger Daltrey in The Legacy. He and Ross have a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott,^[2] born in 1984, who is now a musician in Malibu.^[3] In March 2011, Elliott's wife got a restraining order against Cleo after Cleo allegedly stabbed her repeatedly with a pair of scissors.^[4]

Filmography

References

External links

• Sam Elliott at the Internet Movie Database
• Murder in Texas, movie trailer
• A Tribute to Sam Elliott, fansite
• Where have you gone, Grizzly Adams?, a Los Angeles Times article on the Sam Elliott cowboy stereotype