Katharine Juliet Ross (born January 29, 1940)^[6] is an American film and stage actress. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she came to prominence as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 film The Graduate, for which she won a Golden Globe award and received an Academy Award nomination.

She then starred as Etta Place in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and won a BAFTA for role in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here the same year. She has also starred in The Stepford Wives in 1975 and won another Golden Globe for Voyage of the Damned in 1977. She has established herself as an author, publishing several children's books.

Early life[link]

Ross was born in Hollywood, California, when her father was in the Navy. He had also worked for the Associated Press.^[7] Her family later settled in Walnut Creek, California, east of San Francisco. She graduated from Las Lomas High School. Ross was a keen horse rider in her youth,^[8] and was friends with Casey Tibbs, a rodeo rider.^[9]

Career[link]

She studied at Santa Rosa Junior College for a year, where she had her introduction to acting in a production of The King and I. She dropped out of the course and moved to San Francisco to study acting.^[8] She joined The Actors Workshop and was with them for three years^[10] working as an understudy;^[11] for one role in Jean Genet's The Balcony she appeared nude on stage,^[11] and in 1964 she was cast by John Houseman as Cordelia in a production of King Lear.^[12][13] While at the Workshop, she began acting bit parts in television series in Los Angeles to earn extra money.^[8] She was brought to Hollywood by Metro, dropped, then picked up by Universal.^[14]

Her first television role was in Sam Benedict in 1962.^[10] In 1964, Ross appeared in episodes of The Virginian and Gunsmoke, and made her first film, Shenandoah, followed by a starring role in Mister Buddwing with MGM in 1965.^[10] In 1966, she appeared in the episode "To Light a Candle" of Barry Sullivan's NBC Western The Road West.

That year, she had her first major role in the film Games.^[8] Then came her breakout roles in two of cinema's most popular films, Elaine Robinson in The Graduate (1967) and Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).^[15] After appearing as Dustin Hoffman's girlfriend Elaine in The Graduate, a part for which she received an Oscar nomination^[16] and a Golden Globe as most promising female newcomer,^[2] she said that "I'm not a movie star...that system is dying and I'd like to help it along."^[8] She also won a BAFTA for her part as an Indian in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969).^[17] She turned down several roles before accepting the part in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and then turned down several more roles,^[18] including a part in The Towering Inferno.^[19] She was dropped by Universal in the spring of 1969 for refusing to play a stewardess in Airport, a role that went to Jacqueline Bisset.^[14] She preferred stage acting, returning to the small playhouses in LA for much of the 1970s.^[18] One of her best-known roles came in 1975's The Stepford Wives, for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress.^[20] She reprised the role of Etta Place in a 1976 ABC TV movie, Wanted: The Sundance Woman,^[15] and then won a Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her part in 1977's Voyage of the Damned;^[21] as of 2011, she, along with Shirley MacLaine in Madame Sousatzka in 1988, are the only Golden Globe winners to not get an Oscar nomination for the same performance.^{[citation needed]}

She starred in several TV movies from the late 1970s,^[22] including Murder by Natural Causes in 1979 with Hal Holbrook, Barry Bostwick and Richard Anderson,^{[citation needed]} Rodeo Girl in 1980,^[5] Murder in Texas in 1981,^[19] and the 1980s television series The Colbys opposite Charlton Heston as Francesca Scott Colby.^[23] More recently, she played Donnie's therapist in the 2001 film Donnie Darko.^[24]

Personal life[link]

Ross has lived in Malibu, California, since the late 1960s. While at the Actors Workshop in the early 1960s, she lived above a grocer's shop on Stockton Street,^[11] and was married to fellow actor Joel Fabiani for six months.^[1][2]

Ross was married to the triple Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall from June 1970^[3] to 1975, after meeting him on the set of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.^[18] They separated in 1973.^[25]

She was married to Gaetano Lisi (known as Tom) from 1975 to 1979, after they met when he was a chauffeur and technician on The Stepford Wives.^[4][26]

Ross is now married to actor Sam Elliott, whom she met when they co-starred in the 1978 film The Legacy (one of his first film roles was as 'Card Player #2' in the opening scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). The couple married in 1984 and have a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott,^[27] born in 1984, who is now an aspiring musician in Malibu.^[28] In March 2011, Ross got a restraining order against Cleo after Cleo allegedly stabbed her repeatedly with a pair of scissors.^[29]

Credits[link]

Selected filmography[link]

• Shenandoah (1965), as James Stewart's character's daughter-in-law.
• The Big Valley episode "Winner Lose All" (1965) as Maria Montoya
• The Singing Nun (1966), as Nicole
• Mister Buddwing (1966), as Janet, with James Garner
• Games (1967), directed by Curtis Harrington, with James Caan and Simone Signoret^[8]
• The Graduate (1967), as Elaine Robinson, a college student who discovers that her mother and boyfriend have had an affair
• Hellfighters (1968), as Tish Buckman, playing John Wayne's character's daughter.^[8]
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), as rural schoolteacher Etta Place in the 1890s involved with the eponymous outlaws
• Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), as Lola, lover of Willie Boy (Robert Blake)
• "Fools" (1970), as Anais Appleton, a young and unfulfilled wife has a romance with an aging actor played by (Jason Robards, Jr.). In this drama, a romance is sparked when two people, dissatisfied with their lives, move to San Francisco in hope of a fresh start.
• Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), as a nameless woman who falls in love with a tap-dancing magician.
• They Only Kill Their Masters (1972), as a murder suspect
• The Stepford Wives (1975) as Joanna Ingalls Eberhart, a suburban housewife who discovers a terrible secret about her community.
• Voyage of the Damned (1976)
• The Legacy (1978)
• The Betsy (1978) opposite Laurence Olivier
• The Swarm (1978)
• The Final Countdown (1980), as the secretary to a U.S. Senator in the 1940s
• Rodeo Girl (1980)
• Wrong Is Right (1982)
• Red Headed Stranger (1986)
• The Shadow Riders (1982) (TV) as Kate
• Conagher (1991) as Evie Teale. She co-wrote the script with her husband and Jeffrey M. Meyer.^[30]
• Home Before Dark (1997) as Rose, the aunt of a girl whose mother attempts suicide.^[31]
• Donnie Darko (2001), as a psychiatrist treating the title character (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teen with disturbing visions
• Eye of the Dolphin (2007), as Lucy, the grandmother of Alyssa (Carly Schroeder)^[32]

Books[link]

• Grover, Grover come on over!
• The Teeny, Tiny Farm.
• Bear Island.
• The Baby Animals' Party.
• The Fuzzytail Friends' Great Egg Hunt.
• The Little Quiet Book. (with Jean Hirashima, Random House)
• The Little Noise Book. (with Jean Hirashima, Random House)
• Open the Door, Little Dinosaur. (with Norman Gorbaty)
• Twinkle, Twinkle The Little Bug. (with Tom Cooke)
• Sweetie and Petie. (with Lisa McCue)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Katharine Ross at the Internet Movie Database
• Profile at TCM