Sam Elliott Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth & Biography

Sam Elliott is an American actor known for his deep voice, his moustache and his long career in westerns, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Tombstone and 1883. Born on August 9, 1944, in Sacramento, California, Elliott, 82, is a veteran of film and television who has become one of the most recognisable character actors in Hollywood.

Quick Facts

Who Is Sam Elliott?

Sam Elliott is an actor whose voice is almost as famous as his face. Deep, slow and unmistakably American, it has been used in commercials, in narration and in films, and it has become a shorthand for the American West. On screen, Elliott is tall, lean and weathered, with a moustache that has become part of his image, and he has played cowboys, soldiers, bikers and fathers with a quiet authority that few actors can match. He first reached a wide audience as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993), a film about Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and he played The Stranger, the narrator, in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998), a role that introduced him to a new generation of fans.

Elliott has also shown a softer side, as in A Star Is Born (2018), in which he played Bobby Maine, the older brother and manager of Bradley Cooper’s character, a performance that earned him his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Supporting Actor, at the age of 74. He has played a bouncer in Road House (1989), a general in We Were Soldiers (2002), and a rancher in The Ranch (2016-2020), a Netflix series in which he played Beau Bennett, the father of Ashton Kutcher’s character. In 1883 (2021-2022), a prequel to Yellowstone, he played Shea Brennan, a Pinkerton agent leading a wagon train west, a role that brought him a Screen Actors Guild Award and showed that, even in his late seventies, he could still carry a major television series.

Early Life & Background

Samuel Pack Elliott was born in Sacramento, California, the son of Henry Nelson Elliott, who worked in the United States Department of the Interior as a predator control specialist, and Glynn Mamie Sparks, who worked in real estate. The family moved to Portland, Oregon, when Elliott was a teenager, and he attended David Douglas High School, where he played football and became interested in acting. He studied at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, where he appeared in a production of Guys and Dolls, and he later studied at the University of Oregon, although he left before graduating to pursue acting in Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Elliott worked in small roles in film and television, including in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), in which he had a small, uncredited role as a card player, and in The Way West (1967). He appeared in the television series Mission: Impossible and in Gunsmoke, and he worked steadily through the 1970s in westerns and in television films, including Lifeguard (1976), in which he played the title role, a lifeguard who must decide what to do with his life. He met his future wife, the actress Katharine Ross, on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, although they did not become a couple until much later, when they worked together again in the film The Legacy (1978).

Career

Elliott’s career took off in the 1980s and 1990s, with roles in Mask (1985), in which he played Gar, the biker boyfriend of Cher, in Road House, in which he played Wade Garrett, the mentor to Patrick Swayze’s bouncer, and in Tombstone, in which he played Virgil Earp. He has worked in Gettysburg (1993), The Big Lebowski, We Were Soldiers, Hulk (2003) and Thank You for Smoking (2005), and he has become known for his voice work, narrating commercials for Dodge Ram trucks and providing the voice of the narrator in The Big Lebowski.

In recent years, Elliott has played in The Ranch, in A Star Is Born, which brought him an Oscar nomination, and in 1883, in which he played Shea Brennan, a role that won him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series. He has been married to Katharine Ross since 1984, and they have a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott, who is a singer-songwriter. He is known for his professionalism, for his love of the American West, and for a career that has lasted for more than fifty years, from small roles in the 1960s to leading roles in the 2020s.

Facts About Sam Elliott

• He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Star Is Born in 2019, at the age of 74.
• He played Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) and The Stranger in The Big Lebowski (1998).
• He won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in the series 1883.
• He has been married to actress Katharine Ross since 1984, and they have a daughter, Cleo.
• He is the voice of the narrator in The Big Lebowski and has voiced commercials for Dodge Ram trucks.

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