‘Of course I smoked marijuana!’ Elliott Gould on stardom, Streisand and Elvis Presley
The best review ever received by Elliott Gould – renowned actor and star of M*A*S*H and The Long Goodbye; not to mention, Ross and Monica’s dad on Friends – was from Groucho Marx. The two of them had become close in the comedian’s latter years – so close, Gould says, “he used to let me shave him”. One day Marx asked Gould to change a lightbulb in his bedroom. Gould took off his shoes, stood on the bed and replaced the broken bulb. Marx told him: “That was the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.”
Gould, now 81, has been telling the story for decades – but it is clear even in our pixelated video call that it still delights him. “Isn’t that great?” he says, his distinctive nasal, New York baritone now deepened with age. As we speak he is sitting at a computer at a friend’s house in Los Angeles, relaxed in a blue hoodie, with a seemingly bottomless mug of coffee before him. In isolation on either side of the Atlantic, neither of us has anywhere to be. And after more than half a century in Hollywood, in which he went from leading man to exile and, eventually, fixture – Gould could fill days, not just hours, with his stories. Even without his eight-year marriage to Barbra Streisand.
In a prolific list of credits, Gould has no single iconic role. You might chooseM*A*S*H, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice or The Long Goodbye, but there are also Little Murders (“close to a perfect picture,” says Gould), Capricorn One,
American History X, the Ocean’s 11 franchise – or Friends. (The week before our interview, Gould was due to reprise the role of Jack Gellar in Friends for HBO Max’s long-awaited reunion special, but the pandemic delayed production.)
Many have seen Gould more recently in Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 medical thriller that has had a coronavirus-inspired resurgence. Gould plays an epidemiologist based on the real-life expert Dr Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, who consulted on the film. The pair remain friendly and Gould says Lipkin gave him advice on his plans to travel to Seattle and Italy: don’t go. (The scientist was diagnosed with the virus shortly afterwards.)
So Gould is “sequestering” in his friend’s house and happy to tell the story of his life, even if by way of many freewheeling divergences, from Netflix recommendations to gnomic theories on human nature. Gould admits his thinking is “not always linear”. Some memories take time to retrieve: “I flush it out as we’re talking.” But once they emerge, they are precise, both in detail and dialogue, such as his “little date” with Elvis.
Back in the 70s, Gould asked to meet Presley in his Las Vegas dressing room. They were at close quarters, Gould recalls, made all the more so by the conspicuous, gilded .45 automatic in Elvis’s belt and the watchful presence of his manager, Tom “The Colonel” Parker, as well as the singer’s father, Vernon. It was clear to Gould that they would not let their “cash cow” out of their sight and he said so, urging Presley to “leave ‘Elvis’ here and come out, be a free spirit”. “Elvis says to me, with his gold gun in his belt: ‘You’re crazy, man.’ I said: ‘Elvis, I ain’t crazy. I’m scared, just like you.’”
Gould was born Elliott Goldstein in Brooklyn in 1938, the only child of Bernard and Lucille – non-orthodox, working-class Jews. Their marriage was troubled (they eventually divorced after 27 years), but they were ambitious for their son, putting him through stage school.
He was a shy, fearful child, who loved to get lost in radio dramas, Sherlock Holmes stories and Pinocchio, but struggled to express himself. His parents worried that he was slow to develop. One of his earliest memories is being told, when he was two: “You don’t know how to feel, and you don’t know how to think, and we’ll tell you.”
“I didn’t know that there was a difference between thinking and feeling,” he says. “Now I realise, because I’ve been able to understand myself, and having been afraid for so long – I didn’t want them to think I was stupid.” Yet he also credits them with his success: “My mother never gave up – I have no choice, I have to be this way.”
As a young boy he did not enjoy performing, but it brought him out of his shell. “I thought that if I memorised routines, perhaps I could be able to communicate.” His tap dance teacher made a particular impression on the 12-year-old Gould. “He just pounded me mentally. When I wept, he did not treat me like a baby and he got through to me.” Later, the teacher gave him a copy of Webster’s dictionary, to which he still routinely refers.
In 1957, aged 19, Gould made his Broadway debut in the musical Rumple, at the Alvin theatre. “It smelled great,” Gould remembers, inhaling the memory. “I could go to the theatre and feel I have some place where I belong.” A few small parts followed. Then, in 1961, he was cast as the leading man in the musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale, “which was so unlikely!” he says, with feeling. He sat in on the final audition of the “brilliant” Barbra Streisand. Gould says he saw elements of himself in her, that same inhibition from childhood: “She presents herself the way I feel about myself.”
I interject: did he fancy her? Gould goes quiet and I wonder if our video connection has cut out. Then he says: “She’s so beautiful, are you kidding?” After her audition, Streisand gave him her phone number aloud; Gould memorised it, and called her. Streisand invited him to see her sing but he declined. “I said: ‘You’re so good, I think you’re going to be in the show – we’ll see if we get to know one another then.’”
Streisand was cast as Gould’s cha