Sam Elliott

Elliott starred as Shea Brennan in the American drama miniseries 1883 (2021–2022), for which he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.

Elliott is known for his distinctive lanky physique, full mustache, and deep, sonorous voice.

Samuel Pack Elliott (born August 9, 1944) is an American actor.

He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award and a National Board of Review Award.

He has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Emmy Awards.

Samuel Pack Elliott was born August 9, 1944, at the Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, California, the son of Glynn Mamie (née Sparks), a Texas state diving champion in high school and later a physical-training instructor and high-school teacher, and Henry Nelson Elliott, who worked as a predator-control specialist for the Department of the Interior.

His parents were originally from El Paso, Texas, and Elliott has an ancestor who served as a surgeon at the Battle of San Jacinto.

He moved from California to Portland, Oregon, with his family when he was 13 years old.

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.

"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."

Elliott spent his teenaged years living in northeast Portland, and graduated from David Douglas High School in 1962.

After graduating from high school, Elliott attended college at the University of Oregon as an English and psychology major for two terms before dropping out.

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.

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.

He dropped out again after his father died of a heart attack.

He began his acting career with minor appearances in The Way West (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), season five of Mission: Impossible, and guest-starred on television in the Western Gunsmoke (1972) before landing his first lead film role in Frogs (1972).

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.

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).

He went on to appear in two additional episodes of the series between 1970 and 1971.

In the 1970–1971 television season, Elliott starred as Doug Robert for several episodes in the hit series Mission: Impossible.

Beginning in 1972, Elliott appeared as the cowboy Walker in a series of Falstaff Beer commercials.

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.

His film breakthrough was in the drama Lifeguard (1976).

From 1976 to 1977, he played the lead character Sam Damon in the miniseries Once an Eagle, an adaptation of the Anton Myrer novel of the same name, opposite Amy Irving, Kim Hunter, Clu Gulager, and Melanie Griffith.

He also had a starring role as Rick Carlson in the summer sleeper hit Lifeguard (1976), which marked his feature film breakthrough.

He portrayed a lifeguard in Southern California who reevaluates his life choices after being invited to a reunion.

Elliott co-starred in the box office hit Mask (1985) and went on to star in several Louis L'Amour adaptations such as The Quick and the Dead (1987) and Conagher (1991), the latter of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.

His other film credits from the early 1990s include as John Buford in the historical drama Gettysburg (1993) and as Virgil Earp in the Western Tombstone (also 1993).

He received his second Golden Globe and first Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Buffalo Girls (1995).

In 1998, he played the Stranger in The Big Lebowski.

In the 2000s, Elliott appeared in supporting roles in the drama We Were Soldiers (2002) and the superhero films Hulk (2003) and Ghost Rider (2007).

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.

Elliott began his career as a character actor; his appearance, voice, and bearing were well-suited to Westerns.

In 2015, he guest-starred on the series Justified, which earned him a Critics' Choice Television Award, and in 2016 began starring in the Netflix series The Ranch.

Elliott subsequently had a lead role in the comedy-drama The Hero (2017).

Elliott was cast in the musical drama A Star Is Born (2018), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding prizes at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards.

He also won a National Board of Review Award.