A Star Is Born actor Sam Elliott and The Graduate actress Katharine Ross have much more in common than being Oscar-nominated Hollywood legends. The two have been married for 34 years.
Ross, 79, is best known for her roles in the ’60s classics The Graduate (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), as well as The Stepford Wives (1975) and Voyage of the Damned (1976). She earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Graduate and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for Voyage of the Damned. In 1978, she met Elliott while working on the horror film The Legacy in England.
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“It turned out we probably grew up about 80 miles apart in California but we had to go ‘across the pond’ to meet,” Ross told The San Luis Obispo Tribune.
She said the first thing she noticed about Elliott was his perfectionism during a table read for the film.
“He was very particular about the script and the dialogue and how things were said,” Ross said. “He was not afraid to speak up about what he thought.”
Two other things stood out: his now-iconic voice and his mustache.
Ross and Elliott married in 1984 and are parents to daughter Cleo, 34. They have worked together on several films since then, most recently 2017’s The Hero. Ross told The Tribune their frequent collaborations have helped their marriage stay strong.
“Sometimes that’s easier than real life,” she told The Tribune. “You’re got a script. You’ve got a part. You’ve got your creative juices flowing together. It’s not about the dirty dishes in the sink or whether you’ve picked something up at the laundry.”
Elliott, 74, and Ross live together in Malibu, and almost lost their home last fall during California’s wildfire season. Ironically, Elliott voiced Smokey the Bear for a National Parks Service campaign.
“We went through the fire in Malibu, came right over the top of us, and we stayed and poured the water on and watched the house behind us burn to the ground, and we made it through,” Elliott told CBS Sunday Morning.
Although the couple first met on the set of The Legacy, a quick look at their IMDb pages will reveal that they both appeared in Butch Cassidy. While Ross was a major star at the time and played a lead role, Elliott had a small background part in the Western. They were not in the same scene together, either.
“All I could do was just watch Katharine come and go,” Elliott recalled in a NewsOK interview. “We didn’t interact at all. I saw her a lot because I knew who she was, and I was just another guy on the lot at that point and time.”
As for Elliott’s theory on why their relationship has lasted so long, he said it was their common sensibility.
“We have a common sensibility, but we also work at being together,” he told AARP. “You work past the s—; you don’t walk away from it. That’s how relationships last.”
Elliott, who also stars on Netflix’s The Ranch, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Star Is Born.
The 91st Academy Awards kick off at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
Photo credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
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