A graduate of the University of Oregon and Clark College, Elliott began his career with minor roles on screen, making his film debut in the western The Way West (1967). After his first leading film role in the horror Frogs (1972), Elliott gained wider attention with his breakthrough role in the drama Lifeguard (1976). He achieved commercial success with his role in the biopic Mask (1985) and received Golden Globe nominations for starring in Louis L'Amour's adaptation of Conagher (1991) and the miniseries Buffalo Girls (1995), the latter of which also earned him his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Throughout the 1990s, he portrayed John Buford in the historical drama Gettysburg (1993), Virgil Earp in the western Tombstone (1993), and the Stranger in the crime comedy The Big Lebowski (1998).
Elliott spent his teenaged years living in northeast Portland,[8] and graduated from David Douglas High School in 1962.[9] After graduating from high school, Elliott attended college at the University of Oregon as an English and psychology major[10] for two terms before dropping out.[3] He returned to Portland and attended Clark College in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where he completed a two-year program and was cast as Big Jule in a stage production of Guys and Dolls.[8] The Vancouver Columbian newspaper suggested that Elliott should be a professional actor. After his graduation from Clark in 1965, Elliott re-enrolled at the University of Oregon and pledged at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.[3] He dropped out again after his father died of a heart attack.[3]
In the late 1960s, Elliott relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, which his father had dissuaded him from doing, instead urging him to obtain a college degree.[3] "He gave me that proverbial line, 'You've got a snowball's chance in hell of having a career in (Hollywood),'" Elliott recalled. "He was a realist, my dad. He was a hard worker. He had a work ethic that I've fashioned mine after, and I thank him for that every day."[3] Elliott worked in construction while studying acting and served in the California Air National Guard's 146th Airlift Wing (the Hollywood Guard) at Van Nuys Airport before the unit moved to Channel Islands Air National Guard Station.[11]
Career
Early work
Elliott began his career as a character actor; his appearance, voice, and bearing were well-suited to Westerns. In 1969, he earned his first television credit as Dan Kenyon in Judd for the Defense in the episode "The Crystal Maze".
That same year he appeared in the show Lancer in the episode "Death Bait", playing Renslo.[12] He went on to appear in two additional episodes of the series between 1970 and 1971.[12] One of his early film roles was as a card player who watches as the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) demonstrates his shooting ability in the opening scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).[13] In the 1970–1971 television season, Elliott starred as Doug Robert for several episodes in the hit series Mission: Impossible.[13] Beginning in 1972, Elliott appeared as the cowboy Walker in a series of Falstaff Beer commercials.[14][15][16] In 1975, Elliott was cast in a lead role as Charles Wood in the television film I Will Fight No More Forever, a dramatization of Chief Joseph's resistance to the U.S. government's forcible removal of his Nez Perce Indian tribe to a reservation in Idaho.[17]
From 1976 to 1977, he played the lead character Sam Damon in the miniseries Once an Eagle, an adaptation of the Anton Myrernovel of the same name, opposite Amy Irving, Kim Hunter, Clu Gulager, and Melanie Griffith.[18] He also had a starring role as Rick Carlson in the summer sleeper hit Lifeguard (1976), which marked his feature film breakthrough.[19] He portrayed a lifeguard in Southern California who reevaluates his life choices after being invited to a reunion.[20]Variety deemed the film "unsatisfying," adding: "Elliott, who has some beefcake value, projects a character who is mostly a passive reactor rather than a person in sure command of his fate."[20]
Recognition as a character actor
Elliott played Tom Keating in the miniseries Aspen in 1977. He later played an abusive wife-killer in the miniseries Murder in Texas (1981) opposite Farrah Fawcett and his future wife Katharine Ross,[21] and starred with Cheryl Ladd in A Death in California (1985).[22] In 1979, he co-starred with Tom Selleck in the popular miniseries adaptation of Louis L'Amour's The Sacketts. Elliott and Selleck were a team again in 1982 in The Shadow Riders, another Louis L'Amour adaption.[23]
Elliott had a supporting role in Mask (1985) opposite Cher. He played a hard-nosed, rough-around-the-edges but ultimately sympathetic father figure in the Christmas film Prancer (1989). He has made guest appearances on shows including Felony Squad, Gunsmoke, Lancer, and Hawaii Five-O, and has been featured in many TV movies, including Buffalo Girls (1995), in which he played Wild Bill Hickok.
In 1986, he starred in the TV movie Gone to Texas, based on a biography of Sam Houston. The role allowed him to play Houston as both fighter and a man who grew into a skillful political leader; the film depicted his disgrace as governor of Tennessee, his return to his Cherokee Nation friends, and his pivotal role in the liberation of Texas from Mexico in 1836. Elliott appeared with Patrick Swayze in Road House (1989) as Wade Garrett, a bouncer, mentor and friend of Swayze's character. In 1991, Elliott and his wife Katharine Ross starred in the adaptation of the Louis L'Amour novel Conagher (1991).[24]
In 2005, he appeared in Thank You for Smoking as a former Marlboro Man advertisement cowboy who has developed lung cancer. In 2006 he provided the voice for the character Ben the Cow in the animated film Barnyard.
In 2009, Elliott had a small role in Up In The Air in which he portrayed the chief pilot of American Airlines. He appeared three times on Parks and Recreation as Ron Dunn, the Eagleton equivalent of Ron Swanson; Dunn is a hippie, compared to Swanson's staunch survivalist and Libertarian personality. He then provided the voice of Buster (a.k.a. Chupadogra) in the animated film Marmaduke (2010). He had a supporting role in the thriller film The Company You Keep and played a college football coach in 2014's drama film Draft Day.
In 2017, Elliott starred in The Hero, as Lee Hayden, an aging Western icon with a golden voice, whose best performances are decades behind him.[30] His work in the film received much critical acclaim with Joey Magidson, writing for AwardsCircuit, proclaiming that "Elliott is perfect here. The Hero encapsulates everything you love about him into one package."[31] Later that year, Elliott starred in The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot.[32]
In 1998, Elliott was named the grand marshal of the Calgary Stampede parade and rode in the procession before an estimated 300,000 spectators.[37]
Voice work
Elliott has performed voice-over narration for various commercials. He has lent his voice to campaigns for Dodge, IBM, Kinney Drugs, Union Pacific, and most notably the American Beef Council, succeeding Robert Mitchum in the latter. Since late 2007 Elliott has done voice-overs for Coors beer, bringing his deep, rich voice and "western" appeal to the brand brewed in Colorado. In 2010, Ram Trucks hired Elliott to do the voice-over for their Ram Heavy Duty truck commercial; he has been voicing their commercials since. Starting in 2008, he has voiced Smokey Bear, and shares the mascot's birth date (August 9, 1944). He also narrated the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers team introductions to Super Bowl XLV, played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas at the conclusion of the 2010 NFL season for NFL on Fox. On September 9, 2020, it was announced that Elliott would begin recurring on Family Guy as the new mayor of Quahog, the late Mayor Adam West's cousin, Wild Wild West.[38] Also in 2020, he voiced Joe Biden's "Go From There" campaign ad.[39]
Personal life
Elliott married actress Katharine Ross in 1984, becoming her fifth husband.[40] They have a daughter, Cleo,[41] who is a musician in Malibu, California.[42] Ross and Elliott live on a seaside ranch in Malibu, which they purchased in the 1970s.[3] Elliott also maintains a property in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.[3] Following his mother's death in 2012 at the age of 96, he also took ownership of his childhood home in northeast Portland.[3]
^ abParish, James Robert; Terrace, Vincent (1990). The Complete Actors' Television Credits, 1948-1988: Actors (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. pp. 170–171. ISBN978-0-810-82204-7.
^Rettenmund, Matthew (1995). Totally Awesome 80s: A Lexicon of the Music, Videos, Movies, TV Shows, Stars, and Trends of that Decadent Decade. New York: Macmillan. p. 141. ISBN978-0-312-14436-4.