Director Brett Haley created “The Hero’’ for Sam Elliott, trading on the honey-soaked gravel-voiced actor’s penchant for playing laconic cowboys to give resonance to the movie’s washed-up western star Lee Hayden, who wrestles with his career and personal failures in the wake of a cancer diagnosis. But Elliott, who’s been enjoying a late-career resurgence (he’s currently on Netflix’s sitcom “The Ranch’’), is quick to point out that he’s hardly the hard-living has-been he plays in the just-opened film.
“Elements of the character are close to me and others are out of left field, figments of Brett’s imagination. One of ’em is the dope smoking,’’ says Elliott, 72, of Lee’s excessive partying with his former costar turned dealer, Jeremy (Nick Offerman). “I suppose it eases [Lee’s] pain but it goes beyond his career; it’s his failed marriage, it’s his tenuous relationship with his daughter, which are two other elements that are completely fictitious. I love my daughter [Cleo] more than anything in the world and I’ve been with Katharine for 39 years, married 33, and I love her dearly.’’
He’s talking about Katharine Ross, the actress best known for the seminal ’60s films “The Graduate’’ and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’’ The couple met when they costarred in the 1978 horror film “The Legacy.’’ In “The Hero,’’ Ross plays Lee’s ex-wife Valerie, an art gallery owner and the mother of his estranged daughter, Lucy (Krysten Ritter). In a crucial scene, Lee tells Valerie that he’s terminally ill (the film actually opens with Lee getting the news) and wants to repair his relationship with Lucy.
Elliot costarred in Haley’s second film, “I’ll See You in My Dreams’’ (2015), playing Blythe Danner’s courtly suitor. As the veteran actor and the young director traveled the country promoting that film, they became friends.
“We got to know one another during weeks on the road, through conversations on airplanes, having dinner, a drink here and there. Brett got to know me and he and [his co-writer] Marc Basch put this thing together, a presentation with photos and story lines . . . I was interested from the get-go. I was flattered that they wrote something for me,’’ says Elliott.
“I would not have made it if he said no,’’ says Haley, 32. Once Elliott was in, it was “a no-brainer’’ to cast Ross, he says. “I was lucky to use their relationship to my advantage in the film. A lot of what happens could not have happened with two actors who didn’t know each other. It’s not a huge part but it’s a vital one and she adds real weight.’’
But Haley, who also edits his films, admits to being ruthless about cutting scenes that he thinks don’t serve the story. “I was probably harder on ‘The Hero’ than on ‘Dreams.’ You end up cutting people,’’ he says. “You have to be brutal. You have to be able to say, ‘Look, it just doesn’t belong’ and that’s a tough thing.’’
Particularly when it’s family. Ross’s performance was truncated in the editing process, much to Elliott’s disappointment.
“Brett and I wanted her and Katharine did us a big favor and half of it ended up on the cutting room floor which is always a tough thing for anyone but it was particularly hard on Katharine,’’ says Elliott.
If Elliott’s taciturn cowboys, from Virgil Earp in “Tombstone’’ to The Stranger in “The Big Lebowski,’’ are winning scene-stealers, his chivalrous manner when talking about Ross and their against-the-odds showbiz marriage is even more appealing.
“Some of it’s good fortune; I met the right woman at the right time. The rest of it is work, just work,’’ he says. “You have mutual respect, and you know it’s a tough road especially for a couple of actors.’’
It helps, he says, that the couple has made a life away from Hollywood.
“We live way out on the western edge of Malibu; we’ve been out here for 40 years, on a big piece of ground. It’s a beautiful spot, with a stream, sycamore trees . . . a lot of animals, a few hired hands but we do most of the work. I wash the dishes every night. We’ve got a real life. It’s by choice.’’
Elliott says shooting “The Ranch’’ on the Warner Bros. lot is often a two-hour commute to Hollywood. “Everybody tells me, ‘You’ve got to get a place in town. You can’t do this five days a week.’ Nope. I’d rather be tired but be home at night.’’
Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.
