Katharine Juliet Ross rose to prominence with her performance in The Graduate, in which she co-starred with Dustin Hoffman. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year for her performance. The film was a huge success, grossing $104.9 million in the US and Canada and becoming the highest-grossing film of 1967. The ending of The Graduate is a mystery because it depicts Benjamin, played by Hoffman, saving Elaine, played by Ross, from her wedding. The two are then seen sitting on a city bus with unexpected expressions on their faces.
“It’s always said that you should just keep going in a scene until the director says ‘cut.'” Mike, for the most part, remained silent. We ran out of dialogue, but the camera didn’t stop rolling. What are my thoughts? “I think Elaine got off at the next stop,” Ross said of the role that catapulted her to fame. “[Dustin Hoffman] was a stage actor in New York. He appeared to have rolled out from under a rock, he was so pale.
He just wanted to get back to his off-Broadway performance. Although we eventually got to know and like each other, “Oh my God — this guy is dressed all in black, and he is white as a sheet,” Ross recalled in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “You may recall that Dustin’s former roommate Gene Hackman was cast as my father. I’m not sure what the deal was, but he bowed out.”
Ross made her professional acting debut in 1962 with Sam Benedict on television and her film debut with Shenandoah, co-starring James Stewart.Ross appeared in a number of films at the start of her rich and successful career, including Hellfighters, Fools, The Final Countdown, A Climate for Killing, and many more, but being an actor in the 1960s wasn’t easy.
“I remember doing a screen test for Samuel Goldwyn Jr.’s only film, The Young Lovers.” It was supposed to star Peter Fonda, but he couldn’t do the screen test with me, so they brought in Chad Everett. He had no idea the role had been cast, and he was giving it his all in the screen test. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. I went through a series of hairstyling sessions to achieve the look Sam desired.
They had hacked off all of my hair by the time they were finished. “And they ended up casting someone else,” she previously told Variety. “I’ll tell you what was great about it,” she went on. “It was a time when the old studio system was dying, and they were just starting to experiment with new approaches, and the little $1 million budget films were seen as the way to go.”
And it did turn out to be the birthplace of a great new era, which eventually became the indie film movement.”She landed another significant role in 1969. She appeared in the now-legendary film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where she balanced on the handlebars of a bicycle pedaled by actor Paul Newman in one of the most iconic scenes ever.
Ross has been happily married to actor Sam Elliott for the last 40 years. She had been married four times before marrying him, and with Elliot, she had finally found true love. They first worked together in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he was an extra and lacked the confidence to approach her. He fell in love with her, and so began one of the most beautiful romances Hollywood has ever seen.
“My wife, Katharine Ross, and I both worked on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but I didn’t dare to approach her at the time.” She was the star of the show. “I was a glorified extra in a bar scene, a shadow on the wall,” Elliott told AARP The Magazine in 2015. “However, it was a fantastic opportunity because being an extra on the show and a contract player (with Fox) allowed me to get in and watch them make the film.”
“While they were in L.A., I spent a lot of time over in a dark corner watching Katharine and the rest of ’em work,” he told The Oklahoman.Ten years later, they found themselves collaborating once more, this time in the Gothic horror film The Legacy. They had a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott, and went on to star in several films together, including Travis McGee, Houston:
The Legend of Texas, and Conagher. In 2017, the two co-starred in The Hero, in which Elliott played an aging Western film star and Ross played his ex-wife. “I think we just like making movies, and having that creative experience together is the best,” Elliott said in 2016 to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s just for fun.” Going home with someone you’re working with is a completely different kind of energy than going home with someone who isn’t working.
It’s been a completely positive experience.”Elliot once said of the secret to a long and happy marriage, “We have a common sensibility, but we also work at being together.” You work through the s-t, not away from it. That is how relationships survive.”