The Gorgeous Transformation Of Sam Elliott's Wife Katharine Ross

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The name Katharine Ross might not be immediately familiar to 21st century moviegoers, but thanks to high-profile roles in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Graduate," and "The Stepford Wives," she was one of the most acclaimed actors of the era known as New Hollywood, achieving recognition at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Academy Awards, too.

And while her career has slowed down since, she's still delivered impressive performances into her late 70s, starring alongside her fifth husband Sam Elliott in a string of later-life roles in both stage and screen. But what else do we know about the now-retired star's journey through the industry and life itself? What was her first true passion, for example? Why was she fired from a major studio? And which member of her own family did she take out a restraining order against? Here's a look at her gorgeous transformation.

Katharine Ross had to ride a horse in several films , including "The Legacy," "Rodeo Girl," and "The Shadow Riders." Luckily, she didn't have to spend months undergoing training to pull off the feat. She was already an experienced rider by the time she hit her teens.

"I first fell in love with horses at the age of seven on a pony ride, going around in circles, grinning from ear to ear as I was jumping about on this very uncomfortable ride," Ross explained to Cowboys & Indians. The actor also revealed that after finishing her very first picture, 1965's "Shenandoah," she celebrated by buying her very own horse. "[Being horseback] kind of takes you away from your problems or whatever is bothering you. I feel very fortunate that I can get away into nature and take a great ride, and always come back feeling much better than when I started out."

Ross has also championed Freedom American Wild Horse Sanctuary, an organization designed to help preserve the numbers of wild free-ranging horses across the country, for several years. And in 2016, she worked with artist Melinda Littlejohn to create a life-size sculpture of a Kiger Mountain mustang that was auctioned off for the charity.

Katharine Ross' love of acting began while she was studying at Santa Rosa Junior College, and after relocating to San Francisco, she further honed her talents with a three-year stint at the Actor's Workshop, going on to star in productions of "The Devil's Disciple" and "Twinkling of an Eye."

In an interview with Variety, Ross credited her time at the workshop for giving her an all-round experience: "It was where I learned I was bitten by the acting bug. But I actually learned a lot because we all did all of the jobs on the production from acting to ticket-taking to props."

In 1964, Ross was cast as Cordelia in John Houseman's adaptation of "King Lear," but the majority of her career gravitated toward the screen. She did, however, tread the boards once again as Melissa Gardner in a revival of "Love Letters," which played at both the Malibu Playhouse and Utah's Electric Theatre in the mid-2010s. "You get to do something from beginning to end. It's never the same, and you've got the audience — the audience is a huge part of how something goes," she later told the Telegram & Gazette about the lure of the stage.

Katharine Ross may now have been a happily married woman for more than 40 years. But at one point, the Californian looked as though she would surpass serial bride Elizabeth Taylor's ex-husband collection.

Indeed, the Actor's Workshop graduate first said "I do" in 1960 to Joel Fabiani, a fellow thespian she first met while they were both studying at Santa Rosa Junior College. Starting a pattern in her personal life, the couple stayed together for two and a half years before heading to divorce court.

In 1964, Ross tied the knot with John Marion, but their marriage lasted only three years. In 1969, she exchanged vows with Conrad Hall, the cinematographer on one of her biggest films, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." But four years on, they, too, had split. Gaetano 'Tom' Lisi, her chauffeur for "The Stepford Wives," became husband number four in 1974 and ex-husband number four five years later.

After her first television appearance in a 1962 episode of the legal drama "Sam Benedict," Katharine Ross practically became a fixture of American television. Indeed, she guested on more than a dozen series over the next four years, including "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," "Arrest and Trial," and "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre."

"I was queen of the screen tests," Ross quipped (via People) in a 1968 chat with Life Magazine about this particular period. "Daily runs from San Francisco to L.A. and back in time for the Workshop's curtain time. I played a whole string of hit-and-run drivers: an innocent hit-and-run driver, a hardened hit-and-run driver, a well-to-do, snotty teenage hit-and-run driver. On "Gunsmoke," I was a sympathetic crippled clubfoot."

In an interview with Variety decades later, Ross recalled the experience of being a jobbing thespian: "Part of being an actor is never knowing where your next part is coming from. My memory of reading Variety from that time is standing in the unemployment line. You read it and you see so-and-so is doing this and so-and-so is doing that and you wonder 'Why am I torturing myself?'" Of course, the Californian's determination and resilience to make it in the bright lights of Hollywood soon paid off.

After making her film debut in 1965's "Shenandoah," Katharine Ross signed a seven-year deal with Universal, an arrangement which initially suited the Californian down to the ground. "My big thing for my first contract was that they couldn't put me in a TV series," she told Los Angeles Times several decades later. "I already had a movie under my belt and done some episodic TV, so it worked nicely."

However, the relationship between star and studio soon soured, as she explained to The Rocky Mountain News in 1975. "I came in at the end of the studio system, when the stars were signed to long contracts, and I suffered from that. I was signed to Universal, and they never gave me anything to do but trash."

Ross went on to reveal that Universal refused to loan her out to their rivals, meaning she lost out on several roles she'd otherwise have agreed to. In retaliation, she turned down most of the parts the studio offered her, leading to a suspension and then a dismissal. "I look back and I think I did it all wrong. The only thing I gained was a bad reputation of being difficult," she recalled. "I kept holding out for something important, something I could be proud of, talk about, feel good about. It just never happened."

Of course, Katharine Ross' breakthrough role in "The Graduate" made her in demand in the late '60s and early '70s. Despite being nine years her junior, the Californian played the daughter of Anne Bancroft's iconic Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols' classic and earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and a New Star of the Year Golden Globe for her efforts, too.

Ross' character Elaine enters into a relationship with the man whom her mom famously seduces, Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock. But her first impressions of her co-star weren't exactly glowing. "He looked like he had rolled out from under a rock he was so pale," she told the San Francisco Chronicle several decades later. "He just wanted to get back to some play off-Broadway he was doing."

So what does Ross believe happened after the much-discussed, wordless final scene where Elaine's runaway bride takes a city bus with her savior Benjamin? "You are always told you just keep going in a scene until the director says 'cut,'" she recalled. "Well, Mike didn't say it for the longest time. We ran out of dialogue, but the camera kept running. What do I think? I think Elaine got off at the next stop."

Having guest-starred in small-screen westerns during her early career, including "Gunsmoke," "The Virginian," and "Wagon Train," Katharine Ross returned to the genre on the big screen. And in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," she was also the leading lady!

Yes, the Californian starred opposite the oft-tragic Robert Redford and Paul Newman as Etta Place, the schoolteacher who joins her lover Sundance and his fellow outlaw on the run to Bolivia to evade the posse on their trail. Considered an all-time classic, the picture was the highest-grossing in America of 1969 and won several Oscars, including Best Screenplay, Best Original Song (for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"), and Best Cinematography. The latter award went to Conrad Hall, who would eventually become Ross' fourth husband.

Ross, who reprised the role in a 1976 made-for-TV sequel titled "Wanted: The Sundance Woman," was also given the chance to operate a camera for one particular scene by her new beau, a development which caused outrage among the crew, including director George Roy Hill, who subsequently forbade her from the set when she wasn't required. "It was very devastating and, in a way, that haunted me for the rest of the film," Ross later admitted (via Prescott Living).

After taking a couple of years away from the industry, Katharine Ross returned in style in 1975 with a leading role in the adaptation of Ira Levin's best-selling novel "The Stepford Wives." The Californian played photographer Joanna Eberhart, who moves into a Connecticut community with her husband and two children populated by strangely subservient women.

Ross received rave reviews for her performance as a woman who (spoiler alert) is replaced by a robot. But in an Entertainment Weekly oral history, the star admitted she wasn't exactly satisfied with her character arc. "If I had a chance to do it again, I would do the ending differently on my part," Ross claimed. "I sort of end up giving up. I don't fight at the very end, and I think I would fight harder."

Ross also revealed that she had to rely on a stunt hand — namely director Bryan Forbes' — during one of the film's most violent scenes. "I remember that it was very hard for me, even though they had made this sort of Styrofoam midsection [for Prentiss]," she recalled the scene in which Joanna knifes Bobbie to see if she's real. "It was very hard for me to stab, even something that wasn't real. So that's his hand on the knife that you see going in."

Katharine Ross certainly didn't let her first — and presumably only — Oscar nomination go to her head. "I'm an actress who happens to be in the movies," she told Life magazine following her Best Supporting Actress nod for "The Graduate." "I'm not a movie star ... that system is dying and I'd like to help it along."

Ross didn't get the chance to make an acceptance speech on the night, losing out to Estelle Parsons for her portrayal of Blanche Barrow in "Bonnie and Clyde." But she did at the Golden Globes that same year when she was crowned New Star of the Year — Actress. And the Californian was also announced as a winner at the same ceremony nine years later, picking up Best Supporting Actress — Motion Picture for her turn as Mira Houser in "Voyage of the Damned."

Ross has also been recognized at the Saturn Awards, winning Best Actress for her performance in "The Stepford Wives," and at the BAFTAs, receiving a Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles nod for "The Graduate" and winning Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Katharine Ross first shared the screen with her fifth husband, Sam Elliott, in 1969's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." While the former was the leading lady, the latter was little more than an extra. "I didn't dare try to talk to her then ..." Elliott later admitted to AARP. "I was a shadow on the wall ..."

However, by the time they were cast in the 1978 horror "The Legacy," they were pretty much on equal footing. Indeed, the couple played girlfriend and boyfriend in the picture, and pretty soon, life started to imitate art. After splitting with fourth husband Gaetano Lisi, Ross got romantically involved with Elliott for real, and in 1984, they got hitched.

More than 40 years later, the lovebirds are still very much together. When asked by NPR in 2017 what the secret to their marital success is, Elliott replied, "I think really what it boils down to is we love each other, and we work at it. And I think more importantly than anything, it takes wanting to be married. The two things that I wanted in my life were to have a movie career and to be married, to have a family. And it's an embarrassment of riches that I've got both." Here's a closer look inside Ross and Elliott's marriage.

1984 sure was an eventful year for Katharine Ross. Besides walking down the aisle with Sam Elliott, the Californian became a first-time mom with the birth of Cleo Rose Elliott. Although the latter has accompanied both of her folks to various film premieres and awards shows, their relationship is reportedly fraught.

In fact, in 2011, Katharine filed a restraining order against Cleo after accusing her of stabbing her with scissors in the arm on several occasions. In the official document, "The Graduate" star alleged that she'd been subjected to both emotional and verbal abuse from her own child since she was young and that while entering her teens, she started to become violent, too.

Katharine argued (via People) that during one particularly heated argument, Cleo had threatened to kill her, vandalized a kitchen cupboard in anger, and pursued her around her home before using scissors to cut off the phone line and attack her physically "using enough force to pierce my skin through my shirt and leave me with marks that are still visible today." The order against Cleo, who's forged a career as a musician, was later dropped.

After a stint as Frankie in the "Dynasty" spinoff "The Colbys" and the TV western "Conagher," in which she also starred alongside her husband Sam Elliott, Katharine Ross stepped back from the industry. But after a four-year break, she returned to the big screen as the titular troubled teen's therapist, Dr. Lilian Thurman in Jake Gyllenhaal's breakthrough "Donnie Darko."

In an oral history of the 2001 film for The Ringer, producer Sean McKittrick revealed that after Ross' name was mentioned by the casting director, he and director Richard Kelly drove to her and Elliott's Malibu home to persuade her to take on the role. But as it turns out, she didn't need much persuading.

"We're like, 'Holy s***! It's him,'" McKittrick recalled, after Elliott opened the door on their arrival. "And he's like, 'Well, are you guys here for Katharine?' And he lets us in, and she starts pitching us on why we should hire her for this role. And like 20 minutes in, we're like, 'Well, wait a second. You want to do this?' And she said, 'Yeah.' 'We thought we were here to convince you.' And she's like, 'Well, this is one of the easier meetings I've had.'"

Katharine Ross's career in the 21st century is somewhat sporadic. She's voiced guest roles in "Family Guy" and "American Dad!," appeared in drama films "Don't Let Go" and "Eye of the Dolphin," and acted alongside Sam Elliott on stage in "Love Letters" and on the screen in "The Hero." It appears she's retired from the spotlight, with her last credit coming as a computer-illiterate woman in the 2019 tech comedy "Attachments."

Ross still makes the odd public appearance, though. In 2015, she showed up to the Season 2 premiere of "Landman" with Elliott — who plays Billy Bob Thornton's father, T.L. Norris, in the "Yellowstone" spinoff — and their daughter Cleo. And the latter's Instagram followers were particularly taken with the get-together. "Wonderful family pic," one fan commented (via Country Living) on a red-carpet snap. "You guys are soo cool. Stay safe." Another remarked, "What a wonderful photo! I adore your parents; they are legends."

Ross was also in attendance when Elliott picked up Outstanding Performance in a Television
Movie or Limited Series at the 2023 SAG Awards for "1883." "Thank you to my wife, my beautiful Katharine," he remarked (via Country Living) in his acceptance speech. "My partner through thick and thin and the mother of our beautiful daughter."