Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Juliet Ross costarred in The Graduate, which is how she first became well-known. For the role, she received nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year.
It was the highest-grossing film of 1967 and a huge smash, earning a total of $104.9 million in the US and Canada. Because Hoffman’s character Benjamin is shown rescuing Ross’s character Elaine from her wedding, the ending of The Graduate remains ambiguous. Then, we see the two sitting on a city bus with surprise emotions on their faces.
“You are told to keep going until the director says, ‘Cut,'” in every scene. Mike took a while to say it, though. We ran out of dialogue, but the camera kept rolling. What am I thinking? “I think Elaine got off at the next stop,” Ross said, referring to the scene that made Elaine famous.
[Dustin Hoffman] was a New York-based theater performer. He looked like he had just rolled out from beneath a rock since he was so pale. He only wanted to get back to his work off Broadway. Even though we eventually got to know and like each other, Ross recalled in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, “Oh my God — this guy is dressed all in black, and he is white as a sheet.”
Dustin’s old roommate, Gene Hackman, was selected to portray my father, as you are aware. I don’t know the specific circumstances, but he bowed out.
Ross began her acting career in 1962, costarring James Stewart in the movie Shenandoah and the television series Sam Benedict.
Being an actress in the 1960s wasn’t simple, even though Ross starred in a number of films in the start of her successful and lucrative career, including Fools, Hellfighters, The Final Countdown, A Climate for Killing, and many more.
I remember doing a screen test for Samuel Goldwyn Jr.’s sole film, The Young Lovers. In lieu of Peter Fonda, who was going to star, they brought in Chad Everett to do the screen test with me. Unaware that the character had been cast, he was giving the screen test his all. I was unable to bring myself to tell him the truth. I had several sessions at the hair salon to get my hair the way Sam wanted it. By the time they finished, they had hacked off all of my hair. At one point, she told Variety, “And they ended up hiring someone else.””I’ll tell you what was great about it,” she continued. At the time, when the old studio structure was coming to an end and they were only starting to try out new tactics, the $1 million budget films were seen to be the way to go. And it turned out to be the start of an amazing new era that ultimately led to the independent film movement.
In 1969, she was given another significant position. In the now-famous film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, she starred in one of the most well-known scenes, balancing on the handlebars of a bicycle that actor Paul Newman was pedaling.
For the past forty-odd years, Ross and actor Sam Elliott have been blissfully married. until she married him, she was married four times until she eventually fell in love with Elliot.
The two initially worked together on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he was an extra in the film and didn’t have the courage to approach her. When he fell in love with her, one of the most beautiful relationships Hollywood has ever seen began.
My wife, Katharine Ross, and I collaborated on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, although at the time, I was scared to approach her. She was the main character. “I was a glorified extra in a bar scene, a shadow on the wall,” Elliott said in a 2015 interview with AARP The Magazine.
But since I was a contract player (with Fox) and an extra on the show, I was allowed to get in and see them make the film, so it was a great experience. He told The Oklahoman, “I used to spend a lot of time in a dim corner watching Katharine and the others work when they were in Los Angeles.”
They worked together again almost ten years later, this time on the Gothic horror movie The Legacy.
They went on to co-star in more films, such as Conagher, Houston: The Legend of Texas, and Travis McGee, after having a daughter called Cleo Rose Elliott.In the 2017 movie The Hero, in which Elliott portrayed an aging Western movie star, Ross played Elliott’s ex-wife.
“I think we just like making movies and having that creative experience together is the best,” Elliott said in a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
It’s just fun. The energy of going home with a coworker is entirely different than that of going home with a non-coworker. It’s a completely positive experience.
“We have a common sensibility, but we also work at being together,” Elliot famously said, referring to the secret of a long and fruitful marriage. You work past the s–t, not ignore it. Partnerships last that way.
