Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross appear in “The Hero.”
Jane Fonda, Debra Winger, Lily Tomlin, Blythe Danner and Laura Prepon all become enamored with Sam Elliott in recent roles on the big and small screen. The only actress he doesn’t excite onscreen is Katharine Ross, who plays his former wife in the new movie “The Hero.” She also happens to be his actual wife of 33 years.
Now, after 50 years of making movies, mostly in supporting parts, the 72-year-old Elliott is having a moment or two. Appearances in the film “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and TV shows “Grace and Frankie” and “The Ranch” have made him a heartthrob for the Baby Boom generation. With what sounds like sincere modesty, Elliott says he has no idea why he’s become a hot number.
Surely his hair has something to do with it. He has an abundance of it, turned a shade of silver usually seen on high-end automobiles. Besides a shock of hair that invites running your hands through, there’s also a mustache so abundant it seems to have taken on a life of its own. In his younger days he favored partially unbuttoned shirts that showed off his hairy chest.
“I try to keep myself in good physical condition,” Elliott said in a sonorous baritone, cultivated over years of singing in church choirs. “I am one of those guys who likes to dig in the yard. We’ve got 3 acres here in Malibu, so there’s always work to do.”
His recent resurgence was sparked by playing Danner’s late-in-life lover in “I’ll See You in My Dreams” two years ago. During extensive travels marketing the film with director Brett Haley, Elliott related stories of his up-anddown career in which he tried to avoid cowboy roles but finally embraced them.
Much of his musings wound up in a script for “The Hero,” which Haley wrote specifically for Elliott. “If he had said ‘no,’ I don’t think I would have made the movie,” the filmmaker said.
Elliott appears as the title character Lee Hayden, an actor remembered only for one role as a Western hero, who is divorced from his wife and estranged from their daughter and sees the world through a marijuana haze.
“A lot of me is in Lee somewhere, but a lot is contrived,” he said. “I don’t smoke pot every day all day — never have and never will. I
have a deep and abiding love relationship with my daughter, and I am still married to my wife.”
The first time Elliott laid eyes on Ross was on the set of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” in 1968. Fresh off the huge success of “The Graduate,” she was the female lead, and Elliott was a bit player who can be spotted for a second in the opening scene.
Ross said she has no memory of him.
But Elliott remembers her. “I saw her everyday coming and going, and I saw her in the commissary. I never spoke to her. I never would even think to speak to her.”
They formally met while working on “The Legacy” and married six years later. One of the issues in “The Hero” is the difficulty of actors staying together because of the amount of travel demanded by their job.
“It is really hard, especially when one is working and the other is not. I am working now more than I have ever worked, and Katharine is not working,” Elliott said.
“That said, she is a pretty stable girl who has been around the block, and she is thrilled I am working as much as I am. What makes a marriage work is a mutual love and a mutual respect. There are peaks and valleys like everything else, but you have to push on.”
Ross’ experience as a popular actress whose career seemed to evaporate helped Elliott understand a similar situation faced by his character in “The Hero.”
“Katharine is not even getting called to go out on interviews for a part. It is very painful to watch. So, yeah, I get it. I know actors go through these periods. It is painful and it is frustrating when you know you are up to do it.”
Ross has her own theory about why her career imploded. She turned down a lot of roles like the stewardess in “Airport” and Bullitt’s girlfriend in the movie of that name.
“Maybe those weren’t the wisest decisions in terms of my career,” she acknowledged. “You get a certain reputation when you say no, and the reputation is she doesn’t want to work. And then you don’t get offered too much.”
One advantage of having a hot husband is the potential of more projects to do together. The two co-starred in and wrote the script for the TV Western “Conagher.” On stage, Ross and Elliott have played the star-crossed lovers in “Love Letters.”
“We fantasize about working together all the time,” Elliott said. “Maybe now it is more realistic — more than just talk.”
Katharine Ross’ experience as a popular actress whose career seemed to evaporate helped Sam Elliott understand a similar situation faced by his character in “The Hero.”