Buckey O’Neill in the epic adventure war miniseries Rough Riders (1997), and the Stranger in the crime comedy The Big Lebowski (1998).

Samuel Pack Elliott was born August 9, 1944, at the Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, California,[1][2] the son of Glynn Mamie (née Sparks), a Texas state diving champion in high school and later a physical-training instructor and high-school teacher, and Henry Nelson Elliott, who worked as a predator-control specialist for the Department of the Interior.

[3][4] His parents were originally from El Paso, Texas, and Elliott has an ancestor who served as a surgeon at the Battle of San Jacinto.

[8][9] Elliott spent his teenage years living in northeast Portland,[8] and graduated from David Douglas High School in 1962.

[9] After graduating from high school, Elliott attended college at the University of Oregon as an English and psychology major[10] for two terms before dropping out.

[3] He returned to Portland and attended Clark College in nearby Vancouver, Washington, where he completed a two-year program and was cast as Big Jule in a stage production of Guys and Dolls.

[3] In the late 1960s, Elliott relocated to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting, which his father had dissuaded him from doing, instead urging him to obtain a college degree.

[14][15][16] In 1975, Elliott was cast in a lead role as Charles Wood in the television film I Will Fight No More Forever, a dramatization of Chief Joseph's resistance to the U.S. government's forcible removal of his Nez Perce Indian tribe to a reservation in Idaho.

[17] From 1976 to 1977, he played the lead character Sam Damon in the miniseries Once an Eagle, an adaptation of the Anton Myrer novel of the same name, opposite Amy Irving, Kim Hunter, Clu Gulager, and Melanie Griffith.

[20] Variety deemed the film "unsatisfying," adding: "Elliott, who has some beefcake value, projects a character who is mostly a passive reactor rather than a person in sure command of his fate.

He later played an abusive wife-killer in the miniseries Murder in Texas (1981) opposite Farrah Fawcett and his future wife Katharine Ross,[21] and starred with Cheryl Ladd in A Death in California (1985).

[24] He portrayed Brigadier General John Buford in the 1993 historical drama Gettysburg, and the same year played Virgil Earp in the Western Tombstone (1993).

[27] In 2015, he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for best guest performer in a drama for his role in the FX Network's show Justified.

[29] In 2017, Elliott starred in The Hero, as Lee Hayden, an aging Western icon with a golden voice, whose best performances are decades behind him.

[30] His work in the film received much critical acclaim with Joey Magidson, writing for AwardsCircuit, proclaiming that "Elliott is perfect here.

[32] The following year, Elliott costarred in A Star Is Born (2018), in which he plays Bobby Maine, the elder half-brother of Bradley Cooper's lead character.

[33] Elliott received critical acclaim for his performance, winning the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor.

The show's story involves Brennan as he leads a group of immigrants from Fort Worth, Texas into the untamed western areas of the plains, and its connection to the Dutton family and its migration to Montana.

He has lent his voice to campaigns for Dodge, IBM, Kinney Drugs, Union Pacific, and most notably the American Beef Council, succeeding Robert Mitchum in the latter.

Since late 2007 Elliott has done voice-overs for Coors beer, bringing his deep, rich voice and "western" appeal to the brand brewed in Colorado.

[39] He did another ad for The Lincoln Project, in support of Kamala Harris' 2024 Presidential Campaign, where he said "It's time to be a man and vote for a woman."