Sam Elliott

“I've been married one time and I have one daughter, who I love more than anyone in the world. And that's where my world is.”

“I've spent my entire career on horseback or on a motorcycle. It boxes you in, the way people perceive you. I read a lot of scripts. Most of 'em go to other actors.”

“I'll do anything. I'll shave my head for the right job. I'm partial to my facial hair, I guess, but I also enjoy doing something where I look totally different, which is kind of the reason why I've always worn long hair. I can really change my look radically by getting rid of it.”

“I was never afraid of hard work.”

“Making movies is never going to get better than working on a Coen brothers project.”

“I think I might have been a more interesting actor, had more of a career earlier on, if I had more formal preparation. When I see something ten years later that I was in I think, 'Boy, would I love to do that over.'”

“I'm not a hunter, but I've been around guns all my life. I'm a great shot.”

“Nobody sets out to make a bad film - I shouldn't say 'nobody.' Some people certainly don't care.”

“I grew up in Sacramento and spent a lot of time in the Saturday matinee. I just thought, 'Wow.' It's that magic of sitting in a dark theater as a little kid. That was in the '50s.”

“I've done films over the years that basically no one saw. And I'm thankful that some of them haven't been seen.”

“My dad worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service, and he worked for the Department of Interior, you know, like the federal government. And consequently, I was outdoors a lot in my lifetime.”

“I've had those periods in my career when I was sitting around waiting for a phone call and had an agent who was doing the same thing rather than going out there to shake the bushes looking for a job for me. It's a frustrating game, that's the downside of this business - the rejection.”

“Any of these Vietnam vets that have been there and know the deal, they don't feel that any Hollywood endeavor about the Vietnam era has ever gotten it right yet.”

“I was single-minded on what I wanted to do since I was like nine or ten.”

“I don't want to be known as a sex symbol. There's a great stigma that goes with that tag. I want to be a Sam Elliott.”

“I understand lost love, and I think that can destroy a man more than anything if it was a deep love that is lost somehow.”

“I was one of the early guys from my generation to have hair on his face. Me and Tom Selleck, and I was first.”

“My western heritage runs deep.”

“Looking back on the long haul in my career, little films, big films, TV, the Western thing has been really good to me.”

“You know, I know a lot of lifeguards. Both my parents were lifeguards at a lake in El Paso, Texas. I was a lifeguard in a swimming pool in Portland, Ore. And I have known and met and befriended a number of oceangoing lifeguards in California where I live.”