Katharine Ross

Katharine Juliet Ross (born January 29, 1940)^[1] is an American film and stage actress. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she is perhaps best known for her role as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 film The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman, and her role as Etta Place in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, opposite Paul Newman and Robert Redford. She has also established herself as an author, publishing several children's books.

Early life

Ross was born in Hollywood, California, when her father was in the Navy. Her family later settled in Walnut Creek, California, east of San Francisco. She graduated from Las Lomas High School. She has lived in Malibu, California since the late 1960s. While attending Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California she starred in a student film by Jim and Artie Mitchell (of O'Farrell Theatre fame).

In 1966, Ross appeared in the episode "To Light a Candle" of Barry Sullivan's NBC western television series The Road West.

Career

Selected film roles

• Shenandoah, (1965), as James Stewart's daughter-in-law.
• The Singing Nun, as Nicole
• Mister Buddwing, (1966), as Janet, with James Garner
• The Graduate, as Elaine Robinson, a college student who discovers that her mother and boyfriend have had an affair.
• Games directed by Curtis Harrington, with James Caan and Simone Signoret
• Get to Know Your Rabbit, as a nameless woman who falls in love with a tap-dancing magician.
• Hellfighters, as Tish Buckman, playing John Wayne's daughter.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, as rural schoolteacher Etta Place in the 1890s involved with the eponymous outlaws
• Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here as Lola, lover of Willie Boy (Robert Blake)
• 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.
• The Legacy (1978)
• The Betsy (1978) opposite Laurence Olivier
• The Final Countdown (1980), as the secretary to a U.S. Senator in the 1940s
• The Shadow Riders (1982) as Kate
• Conagher (1991) as Evie Teale
• Donnie Darko (2001), as a psychiatrist treating the title character (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teen with disturbing visions

She turned down the role of call girl Bree Daniels in Klute (1971), which won Jane Fonda an Oscar. In 1979, she starred with Hal Holbrook, Barry Bostwick and Richard Anderson in the well-received television movie "Murder by Natural Causes". She also starred in the 1980s television series The Colbys playing opposite Charlton Heston as Francesca Colby.

As of 2008, she is the only actress to win a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role without getting an Oscar nomination for the same performance (for Voyage of the Damned (1977)).

Books

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

Personal life

Ross was married to the triple Oscar winning cinematographer Conrad Hall from 1969 to 1975. She is currently married to actor Sam Elliott, whom she met when they co-starred in the 1978 film, The Legacy. The couple married in 1984 and have a daughter, Cleo Rose.

References

External links

• Katharine Ross at the Internet Movie Database