Sam Elliott has presence.
When he walks into a room, you can’t help but notice. He couldn’t sneak in and out of a place if he wanted to. Someone always spots him. And he doesn’t even have to utter a word of that distinctive, billowing drawl of his.
“If I go to the wrong place at the wrong time, I get buried,” he says. “If I go places — particularly without my mustache — and keep my mouth shut, maybe I can become pretty undetectable. But say I go down South, it’s a whole different thing. It has to do with that body of work of mine.”
A self-described “character actor rather than a leading man,” the 57-year-old Elliott has made a name for himself playing tough guys, including Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley in Randall Wallace’s “We Were Soldiers,” a Vietnam saga that opens Friday.
A different role
It’s a slightly different role for Elliott, whose real-life demeanor isn’t much of a stretch from the characters he has played during his 32 years in the business. Elliott is the “cowboy” from such TV fare as “The Sacketts,” “The Yellow Rose” and “Conagher.”
“I guess I’ve gotten typecast as the western guy,” Elliott says. “It was the cowboy genre that dogged me for a while and made it hard for people to see me beyond being a cowboy.”
Maybe it’s because Elliott is a natural. He was born and raised in Sacramento, but his family hails from Texas. Elliott grew up being an outdoorsman — when he watching movies.
“That whole western genre is one of the reasons, initially, that I wound up wanting to be an actor,” Elliott says. “I spent a lot of Saturdays — and some Sundays too — watching those matinees. My recollection is that from 9 years old, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an actor.”
Elliott’s first break in Hollywood came in 1969, when he landed a small part in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” with Paul Newman and Robert Redford (Elliott met his wife, actress Katharine Ross, during filming). Elliott would go on to spend much of his career perfecting his aura as a gruff character actor, building up a solid reputation
Randall Wallace was very familiar with Elliott’s work and had him in mind for the critical role of Sgt. Maj. Plumley as he wrote the screenplay for “We Were Soldiers.”
The film, which is adapted from the book “We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young,” written by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore and war correspondent Joseph L. Galloway, details the battle of LZ X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, a particularly brutal four days of fighting early in the Vietnam conflict. Plumley is the stoic, hard-nosed second in command to Moore (Mel Gibson).
Wallace and Elliott happened to run into each other while vacationing with their families almost three years ago. Over cocktails, Wallace mentioned to Elliott that he was trying to adapt the best-selling book to the big screen, and he wanted Elliott to play Plumley.
“He was the first — the only person — I ever considered for that role,” Wallace says. “Sam has a contained strength. He is so much more than his voice, but his voice is symbolic of him. Sam is like an earthquake whose movements are deep and profound and irresistible. That’s the strength of this character, Plumley, and Sam had the ability to play it. For a character who has so few lines — he might say 100 words in this film — every one of them on the Richter scale.”
Golden opportunity
Not only did Elliott read the book, he also spent substantial time with Plumley prior to production in Ft. Benning, Ga., where Moore’s Air Cavalry trained in 1965.
“It was an unbelievable thing playing a guy that is still alive,” Elliott says. “I’ve played historical characters before and that’s always an exciting experience because there’s this body of knowledge and body of information that’s been written about them. But when you’ve got the man to talk to or he’s willing to talk to you, shame on you if you don’t get something out of it that’s going to put you on the right track.”
Plumley himself has shied away from doing interviews about the film. But when reached at his Ft. Benning home after a screening, Plumley says he was happy with Elliott’s portrayal.
“Sam Elliott is a real fine man and I thought he did a real outstanding job on the movie,” Plumley says.
Elliott has attended screenings of the film, including one for cadets at West Point. Afterwards, Elliott says he was cornered by “more generals than I’ve ever seen in one room.”
At first, the discussion centered on the film. After a while, however, the discussion turned to Elliott and his career. The actor says he became emotional then too.
“They were telling me how much they appreciate the kind of work I’ve done, the choices I’ve decided to make,” Elliott says. “That’s all real good because it’s like an affirmation or even a reaffirmation. I made a decision some time ago that I wasn’t going to do crappy work. I wanted to do something with a certain amount of integrity to it. I feel proud that I’ve done that.”
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For more on Sam Elliott, see Terry Armour’s interview on “WGN Morning News” on Friday.
