Katharine Ross's Real Name: Katharine Juliet Ross

Quick answer: Katharine Ross's documented full name is Katharine Juliet Ross. A Turner Classic Movies profile records that form; People gives her birth date as January 29, 1940 (Turner Classic Movies; People).

Real name and early life

TCM says she was born Katharine Juliet Ross in 1940 in Hollywood. People gives the same month and day, January 29, 1940, but names Los Angeles as the birthplace and says she spent some of her childhood in Hollywood before the family moved to Walnut Creek, near the San Francisco Bay Area. This page records that Hollywood-or-Los-Angeles difference rather than choosing silently. People says she graduated from Las Lomas High School and discovered acting while attending Santa Rosa Junior College. TCM also notes early stage work in the San Francisco area and featured television roles, often in Westerns, beginning in 1962. People records that her feature-film debut included the James Stewart Western Shenandoah; TCM likewise describes a James Stewart Western as her first feature, the film that put her in the spotlight.

Career highlights

Her breakthrough was Elaine Robinson in Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967), opposite Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft. TCM says the film received seven Oscar nominations, including one for Ross as best supporting actress. She then starred as Etta Place opposite Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a credit both sources record. People also lists The Stepford Wives. TCM says that in a 1976 film, playing the daughter of a Jewish couple on an ocean liner in the days before World War II, she won a Golden Globe as best supporting actress. She later worked frequently in television, TCM says, and has also written children's books. People and TCM both record that she met actor Sam Elliott when they appeared in the same film in 1978 and married in 1984; People names their daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott, born later that year. People also notes that the two had first crossed paths years earlier, when Elliott had a small role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Name notes for searchers

Katharine Juliet Ross is the documented full name; she is known professionally as Katharine Ross. Searchers looking for Elaine in The Graduate or Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are usually aiming at the same person.