Empire Australasia – July 2019

The man with the greatest ’tache in movies, Sam Elliott,
talks his long, illustrious career, and killing Bigfoot

doubt about it. The move towards diversity

and the whole #MeToo movement has

been incredibly healthy. I’ve been in

Hollywood a long time, but it’s not like

I’ve been starring in big films with big

stars my entire career. This whole thing,

A Star Is Born, is not what I’ve been

doing. That’s a gift that was given to

me just over the last couple of years.

Bradley Cooper wanted only you

for that Star Is Born role as his

older half-brother. Did he tell you

that upfront?

He was very upfront. I’d never met

Bradley, though I’d always admired him

as an actor. I went to Warner Bros. [to

meet him], not really knowing what to

expect. We talked about a lot of personal

stuff, things that had nothing to do

with the film, and then he played this

soundtrack. He’d been working with this

voice coach and said, “This is going to

OVER A MORE than 50-year career, Sam Elliott has shown

himself capable of adding humanity, depth and (when the

occasion requires) a big, bristling moustache to any role, from

Road House (1989) to The Big Lebowski (1998). Recently he’s

having a killer second, or possibly even third, act, getting a Best

Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his heartbreaking

turn in last year’s A Star Is Born. And now there’s his latest

film, The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then The Bigfoot, which

may sound like an exploitation monster movie but is actually

a thoughtful and rather melancholy character study about a guy

who, er, admittedly does slay the Führer and the Sasquatch. We

asked the man with the best voice in Hollywood to narrate his

own life for a change...

This is not the film people will expect on paper.

The title’s a bit of a misnomer, isn’t it? It was for me when

I read it. There was something about that character, Calvin

Barr. I’ve known a lot of guys who were in the military in the

course of my life, a lot of people that suffered from PTSD.

I thought it was such a lovely treatment of a man.

Yes, it’s one thing to see someone fight off a gang of muggers, but

you rarely see them break down afterwards.

It’s its own reality. That’s why the role spoke to me. I fully

believe that we have a way to teach young men, boys more

often than not, to go to war. But we don’t know how to teach

them to deal with the killing. It was so thoughtful, and

compelling on very many levels.

There seem to be more stories, like this, about ageing than there

used to be in Hollywood.

You’re right, young people used to be everything in the not-

too-distant past. There have been some great films in recent

years, in terms of diversity in general. That said, older women

are still getting pretty short shrift. I’m married to one that was

one of the hottest ladies in town in the ’70s but there’s nobody

that’s knocking on her door asking Katharine [Ross] to work

now. That’s pretty unsettling from a husband’s perspective and a

fellow actor’s perspective. But it’s better than it used to be, no

Western

hero

Right: Sam Elliott

and his magnificent

mo’.. Below: With

co-star and

director Bradley

Cooper in A Star

Is Born (2018)

— which garnered

Elliott his first

❯ Oscar nomination.