Sam Elliott Quotes

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

"I was never afraid of hard work."

"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."

"Hugh Grant is the main man. He's the number one romantic comedy man in the world."

"My voice gets recognized before anything else. It's always gotten attention. In choruses at church and school, I started as a tenor, moved to a baritone and finally became a bass. I knew then that my voice would be my instrument. Now if I want to hide, I just keep my mouth shut."

"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."

"It's never going to get better than working opposite an actor like Jeff Bridges. That's as good as it gets. I don't even know what to refer to him as. He's just a great guy. He's iconic on his own merits."

"I'm a sixth-generation Texan, even though I was born in California."

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

"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."

"My security comes from the fact that I've never done a job for money."

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

"I think anytime you can affect people in general, in a positive way, then you're a lucky individual."

"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."

"The opportunity, number one, to work with Ang Lee is an amazing thing for me."

"I'm picky, very picky. I wanted to be an actor since I was nine years old, and I figured that was only one way to ever have any longevity, and that's to be careful about what kind of work you do."

"I'm a four star general in this thing, and you don't rise to the ranks of a four star general by hanging about the house being the perfect dad."

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

"I just went to see too many movies and I sat in too many dark matinees watching those old serials."

"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 truly loved Jason Reitman. I was there on his first film, 'Thank You For Smoking,' and I'd go work with him to do anything."

"I did beef ads for about eight years because I love the people in that industry, and there are a lot of people who make their living in the beef world. Ranchers, primarily."

"I think the people that most often cross a line are comedians. I think they relish that, and take pride in that on some level - at least, from what little I've seen and understand about people that do stand-up."

"I think every actor's dream is somebody writes something specifically for them."

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

"My family is all from the Southwest. My great-great-grandfather was at the Battle of San Jacinto with Sam Houston."

"It seemed like whenever a Western was going to get made, it came my way."

"My western heritage runs deep."

"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."

"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."