Katharine Ross

It is difficult for her beauty to go unnoticed. But she is a simple beauty, not flashy or exotic at all, settled on a pleasant and smiling face, with deep-gazing, green-brown eyes, and delicate, freckled, fair skin, as befits a redhead. As a whole, her features denote tenderness, femininity and a heart on the surface, which causes in the viewer a certain sensation of a helpless creature, who must be taken care of. Katharine Ross’s best roles forged precisely this tender profile with which she is remembered.

Born in Hollywood, California, on January 29, 1940, Katharine Juliet Ross was the daughter of a United States Navy employee who was not present at her birth, as he was on duty far from there. Because of her father’s profession, the family traveled the country for a while, finally settling outside of San Francisco, where young Katharine attended college and high school. She was at Diablo Valley College where she first took part in a student film. Later, she began to work as a substitute in an actor’s workshop and began to do her first castings.

After appearing slightly in some episodes of soap operas, such as Sam Benedict or The Virginian (series) , he obtained his first role for the cinema in an excellent western film: The Valley of Violence . The actress, then 25 years old, played James Stewart ‘s sister-in-law , who was attacked by a bandit party during the American Civil War. Two years later she would appear among the cast of the comedy Dominique , starring Debbie Reynolds , and the thriller The Woman Without a Face , by Delbert Mann . And it was the following year when her face became known to the general public. First with the disturberDeath Knocks at the Door , a disturbing film by Curtis Harrington in which she played the wife of James Caan and suffered from the sinister presence of Simone Signoret , and later with the mythical The Graduate , turned into a 60s classic. In that emblematic and Still a scandalous Mike Nichols film today , Katharine was the good-natured Elaine, in love with Dustin Hoffman and daughter of the manipulative and cunning Anne Bancroft . That film supposed without a doubt gave rise to the moment of greatest splendor of her. The following year she would accompany John Wayne in an atypical film by the actor, The Fighters from Hell., in which she played the daughter of an already tall firefighter. And then she arrived in 1969 and she composed one of the most remembered and delicious roles of her career, that of Etta Place from Two Men and One Fate . Few times was Katharine as captivating as she was in this film in which she fell in love with one of the funniest and most successful couples on the run in the history of cinema. For the memory remains the scene in which Katharine rode on the handlebars of the bicycle that Butch Cassidy ( Paul Newman ) was driving while the musical theme “Raindrops Keep Falling of My Head” sounded. Truly memorable. Before the end of the decade she filmed one more title with Robert Redford , the highly esteemed Valley of the Fugitive , a dramatic western fromabraham polonsky

But with the onset of the ’70s, Katharine’s career, never very prolific, began to wane in popularity. Perhaps it was due to a poor choice of titles, such as Crazy (1970), They only kill their owner (1972), Chance and violence (1974). With The Stepford Wives (1975) -of which a comic version was made years later, starring Nicole Kidman and entitled The Perfect Women-, and after the notable drama The Betsy , the beautiful California actress would begin a rather discreet career in films. of terror and suspense that gradually undermined her prestige, although she always maintained the favor of the public. that’s how they arrivedThe Swarm and The Legacy in 1978 and The End of the Countdown in 1980. Then, as if foreshadowing her premature decline—think Katharine was only 40—her career focused almost exclusively on TV movies. She thus participated in Rodeo Girl (1980), The Shadows Riders (1982), Secrets of a Mother and Daughter (1983) or Texas Independence (1986). She was also one of the protagonists of the successful series Los Colbys (1985-1987). In 1991 she filmed Conagher , her seventh appearance in a film with Sam Elliott ., her husband since 1984 and with whom she has a son. She was married two other times before, but both marriages ended in divorce. The last notable appearance of her in the cinema was in the cult film Donnie Darko , where she played a doctor.