Elliott Gould

Gould became a star in 1969 when his co-starring role in the sex comedy Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. After playing Trapper John in Robert Altman's counterculture classic M*A*S*H, Gould at last made it to the big league. Tall, curly-haired, more homely than handsome, laid-back, unconventional, sensitive, and unabashedly Jewish, Gould was tremendously popular with young adults who strongly identified with the often confused and neurotic characters he played. Gould's subsequent few films, notably Getting Straight (1970) and Little Murders, reinforced his counterculture image. For a while, he seemed to be everywhere, but by 1973, his career had already begun tapering off. A powerfully subtle performance as Philip Marlow in Altman's Long Goodbye (1973) proved that Gould had talent to spare, but over the next few years, his choice of films only hastened his descent into the relative obscurity of offbeat (California Split and Capricorn One) and sometimes just plain awful films (S*P*Y*S and I Will, I Will for Now). But though his career has continued in a similarly uneven vein mining the shades of gray between excellence and walk-throughs, Gould remains a trooper. His son, Jason Gould, is an actor, too. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide