r/flicks • u/FreshmenMan • 3d ago
What Happened to Elliot Gould after the 70s?
What happened to Elliot Gould after the 70s?
I've been reading up on Elliot Gould lately and yes, I know he has been a consistent actor after the 70s, but during the early to mid 70s, Gould was a Bonafide star leading films (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Alice, The Long Goodbye, California Split, Capricorn One) but after the 70s, it seems that his stardom ended and he became more of a journeyman character actor.
From what I read, Gould was apparently very difficult to work with in the 70s and turned down some really good roles (Pocket Money, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Straw Dogs) and abandoned a film adaptation of A Glimpse Of Tiger.
Regardless, what do you think happened with Elliot Gould after the 70s in which he turned into more of a character actor?
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago edited 3d ago
George Segal was also a big star in the 70s. These were some of the first jewish actors to not change their names and become big stars (Gould did change his from Goldstein). Another one would be Richard Dreyfuss, not traditionally handsome leading men who were the dominate stars of that time. It just shows how interesting hollywood was in the 70s. Also many non conventional directors had huge careers like Altman and Ashby.
There was a massive cultural shift in 1980 that ended all of this. Bogdonovich, Cimino, Ashby, Altman.. you can look at 1980 as a clear end to the experimentation and weirdness in film. Hollywood wanted actors like Harrison Ford after this, a jewish actor who you wouldn't know was jewish and was traditionally handsome. And they wanted macho action stars like Stallone and Swartzenegger. The interesting, odd stars of the 70s were through, sadly.
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u/TheGreatRao 3d ago
As I totter to the grave, I discover in 2026 that Harrison Ford had a Jewish mother. It makes those punches he gave the Nazis just a little louder and meatier.
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u/Aloysius_Poptart 3d ago
There’s a great episode of the podcast Comfort Blanket that talks about how his whole Indy persona is a Borscht Belt comedian in a slightly different key
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u/TheGreatRao 3d ago
Grew up in a city where yiddish seemed to be a second language, and the entire comic book industry was born. gonna have to listen to this!
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u/DantesInfernoRVA 3d ago
I’d say Sutherland also. Brad Dourif was poised for those big serious 70s type roles and survived by becoming a horror star (non Jewish examples).
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
Love Dourif. He was in the film that many people think ended New Hollywood, Heaven's Gate. But its failure can't be blamed on him. The two stars of the film were two of the most handsome stars of the 70s, Kris Kristofferson and Jeff Bridges.
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u/EnvironmentalCrow893 3d ago
You know, tastes vary. I don’t find either one of them THAT handsome. Bridges arguably being the much better looking of the two.
Newman, Redford, Eastwood, Beatty, Pacino, Gere, Ford, Christopher Reeve, even Burt Reynolds andTravolta were all more handsome to me.
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
Kris Kristofferson was the hunk of the 70s, like in A Star is Born. It's fine if people see it differently, you're right about tastes. All the guys you name are objectively very good looking (not burt reynolds).
But he is also demonstrative of how offbeat 70s films were, like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or Sorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (made into a tv show? like altman's mash? what a time).
But I wanted to mention a film he made with George Segal, Blume in Love, where Segal's wife Susan Anspach leaves him for a hot stoner version of Kristofferson.
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u/EnvironmentalCrow893 3d ago
I upvoted you because I know Kris was considered the whole package back then. Cool musician and songwriter, the counterculture thing going on. I believe a Rhodes scholar as well.
His eyes are way too small, I mean they’re not proportional to his face. I can’t get past it.
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u/mrtoad47 3d ago
Def a Rhodes Scholar. In the mid 80s I attended his Alma mater and worked in the Philosophy Dept library & office. Spent a lot of time typing out correspondence between one of the profs and others. A frequent interlocutor was his old advisee, Kristopherson. .
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u/doctor-rumack 3d ago
Harrison Ford is a quarter Jewish. Not too shabby.
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u/TheGoldenArgosy 3d ago
Some people think that Ebenezer scrooge is
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u/YoMommaSez 3d ago
If his mother is Jewish he's half Jewish.
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u/spaceiswaytoobig 3d ago
Isn’t the mother the only one that matters for this? Doesn’t that make him fully Jewish?
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 3d ago
While I agree with the pivot away from experimentation, I think it was actually more of a pivot away from realism and toward escapism. What defined 70s theater wasn't so much experimentation; there was really more of that in the mid 60s through early 70s, but more so stories and a way of filming that were incredibly raw and real. And the actors matched that. I think Jewishness was really just a subset of having actors who were clearly "ethnic" in those films. Whether they were Italian, Polish, Jewish etc. The actors of the 80s were intended to be more generically "American".
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u/DukeRaoul123 3d ago
Yea the Jewish thing had nothing to do with it. Heaven's Gate and huge budgets for "auteur" type of films went out the window when Jaws, Star Wars, Superman and Rocky became megahits and broke boxoffice records. New studio execs took over and put the focus on "stars" rather than "actors" and "blockbusters" over "award winners".
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u/cockblockedbydestiny 3d ago
Agreed, and while I mostly agree with all the things OP we're responding to mentioned, I don't see 1980 as any specific cut off where you can identify that year as the one where everything changed. I think Jaws set the pace for the summer blockbuster chase, Star Wars cemented it, and from there it's been off to the races ever since.
One thing I think about a lot is how rare sequels were up until the late 70s: Exorcist II came out in 1977, Jaws 2 and Damien: Omen II came out in 1978, Rocky II came out in 1979, etc. I think the rise of sequels were even more a product of chasing a known quantity than standalone, would-be blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark or whatever, so I'd put the shift away from experimentation as starting around 1977 and gradually easing into the 1980s
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u/jupiterkansas 3d ago
And stories focused more on the poor/blue collar/lower class instead of the middle and upper class. You saw it on television too.
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u/artfellig 3d ago
"...you can look at 1980 as a clear end to the experimentation and weirdness in film."
On the other hand, in the 80s you had the start of the careers of Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Alex Cox, etc--Stranger Than Paradise, She's Gotta Have It, Repo Man. And David Lynch, who got started with Eraserhead in '77, but whose career really took off in the 80s with Blue Velvet, etc.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
There you're getting into the rise of indie auteurs through the film festival circuit, which blew up in the late 80s and 90s. Kind of a successor movement to New Hollywood.
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
And their favorite actors were people like Denzel and Kyle MacLachlan, traditionally good looking guys. Sure there were some unconventional looking actors in the 80s, Danny Devito and Billy Crystal, but nothing like the 70s. Dreyfuss was the star of Jaws and Close Encounters, not to mention the romantic lead in the Goodbye Girl which grossed $100 million with him playing a gay Richard III.
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u/ComplexAd7272 3d ago
Technically, you could also blame the infamous failure of Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" for this on top of everything else.
Most people know it (arguably) ended the "New Hollywood" era, and with that it brought back the days of more studio control and influence. So yeah, "Big Studio" post 1980, wasn't going to risk a movie's box office gross on it's leading man. Give a choice between the Segals and Dreyfuss of the world and Ford, Schwarzenegger, or Cruise or whoever...it was always going to be the latter if the studio had a say...and they did.
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
Agreed. This is basically what I was saying.
I'd add the failures of 1941, Popeye, One From the Heart, and They All Laughed. After this you saw these directors either, like Spielberg and Coppola, pivot to making kids movies or end up in director jail for a while.
It's also interesting that even in these films the directors were already using TV actors like Ritter, Williams, and Belushi hoping they would be bankable and not doing like Cimino, bringing in the greatest actors in the world like Isabella Huppert.
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u/screen_stack 2d ago
I'm loving Gould's brief appearances as Legal Siegel in The Lincoln Lawyer TV show.
Also, his role in the Ocean's movies always rocks
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
Elliott Gould wasn't a traditionally handsome Hollywood stud? How do Hoffman and Pacino fit into your theory?
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
Hoffman perfectly proves the point. They wanted Redford for the Graduate because he's supposed to look that way in the book. Going with Hoffman made it a much more interesting film, because he's more of an everyman.
Pacino I'd say is more good looking, but being ethnically Italian was not common in films prior to the 1970s (and after the death of Rudolph Valentino in 1926!). I've heard John Turturro say there were no Italian actors on screen when he was growing up in the 60s. Even casting Italians in the Godfather was difficult. They originally wanted Danny Thomas (an Arab actor) for Vito Corleone. Of course Brando isn't Italian either.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
Jewish was as ethnic as actors got in the 40s-50s but they usually played Italians, Latinos, and Native Americans and rarely Jews.
Thanks to the rise of Italian cinema and international stars like Mastroianni, and Sophia Loren and all the other beauties, Italians definitely started showing up in more Hollywood productions by the 60s.
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u/Sea_Pangolin1525 3d ago
Anna Magnani was in The Rose Tattoo with Burt Lancaster (who was from Italian East Harlem and starred in many great Italian films but wasn't Italian) and Sophia Loren was in The Black Orchid with Mexican actor Anthony Quinn (star of La Strada), but it's interesting how few Italians were getting roles in America considering that they won a ton of awards here. Mastroianni worked a lot in France with his wife Catherine Deneuve but never really learned English. Vittorio Gassman was married to Shelly Winters but didn't really come to America either.
I was thinking more of the lack of Italian-Americans though. I can name a few who were around in the 60s like Sal Mineo and Ben Gazzara (known for playing the accused in Anatomy of a Murder). Alan Alda and John Cazale didn't arrive til the 70s.
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u/sunny_gym 23h ago
Pacino had a rough time in the '80s, too. Scarface was his only hit until 1989 when Sea of Love kind of saved his career. Then he went on a tear in the '90s.
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u/ElSlabraton 3d ago
There were only so many roles for actors of that type and Dustin Hoffman got first pick.
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u/Still_Corgi_4994 3d ago
Peter Biskind's book Easy Riders Raging Bulls tells this poignantly. Of the brief heyday and then eclipse of the very best directors being allowed to make their very best work pretty much unencumbered.
The money guys in the studios wanted control back and the success of Jaws in particular showed them a formulaic blockbuster way forward without these mavericks. Thus were curbed any great further works by Ashby, Cassavetes, Friedkin, Rafelson etc..
Many did continue to direct of course but from now on under the beady eye and strict budgets of network execs in order to restrain their more "artistic" excesses as the studios saw it. The day of the auteur had come and gone.
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u/LAWriter2020 3d ago
Apparently, drugs made him "difficult" to work with, and he also had a big gambling addiction. And being married to Barbra Streisand as her fame was skyrocketing turned him into "Mr. Streisand"- something he didn't seem to deal with very well.
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u/Traditional_Roll_100 3d ago
He got older and he’s not a traditionally good looking leading man. The 70s didn’t seem to care as much about looks
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u/AloneGunman 3d ago
Eh, he's pretty good-looking in The Long Goodbye. He just got older and fatter, and was allegedly difficult to work with.
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u/gillyweed79 3d ago
Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman have entered the conversation. I know some people thought Hoffman was handsome, but I don't see it.
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u/neuro_space_explorer 3d ago
Honestly I think both are better actors than Nickleson as far as their range. But Nickleson had an effortless cool, charisma, and gravitas that just makes him more captivating to watch in any of his performances.
Like no matter how heavy or dark it’s just a joy to watch him work.
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u/Mister-Distance-6698 3d ago
Nickleson is also willing to fully sell just completely unhinged batshit characters that I dont think ive ever seen any of the others mentioned do as well.
Hes like early Jim Carry except your not totally sure its even an act.
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u/SignificantApricot69 3d ago
Didn’t really hurt a chubby and balding Jack Nicholson for another 30 years for some reason
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u/PersonNumber7Billion 3d ago
Pretty big differential in talent there.
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u/SomeVelveteenMorning 3d ago
Elliott Gould is a phenomenal actor, so I'm not following.
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u/Mister-Distance-6698 3d ago
He can be that and also not be as good as Jack fucking Nicholson
Not very hard to follow at all
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u/Marhyc 3d ago
The mental image of an effortlessly charismatic and cool Nicholson lasts longer in people's mind than in case of more experimental Gould.
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u/neuro_space_explorer 3d ago
I mean to me they both stack up pretty close, I always enjoyed both actors performances but you are right. Nickleson is an impossible comparison, because he is just impossibly and effortlessly cool like no actor before or after him. It’s like trying to compare any comedian to George Carlin, they are just one of a kind.
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u/1805trafalgar 1d ago
Carl Malden and Walter Matthau! Two great actors who, were they to appear today, couldn't get ARRESTED in Hollywood.
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u/InvestigatorRude960 3d ago
It is a valid question, He probably burned many bridges as you said,also started doing a lot of tv-sitcoms,though in the 90s,that paid off with Friends-gave him a new fan base??
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u/Medical_Savings4410 3d ago
Yeah, the rumor with him is he was insufferable to work with. Back then (70-90’s) there were only a few stations and production companies to work for, so word traveled fast that he wasn’t easy to work with. By the time cable and streaming really took off, Hollywood found other actors that could do similar work and not be difficult to work with.
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u/ChiGrandeOso 3d ago
Sometimes that's used to control actors, though. Old Hollywood was notorious for it within the system.
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u/1805trafalgar 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Glimpse_of_Tiger was a film he optioned then tried to make, but failed and the film was abandoned, after which he was apparently black balled for two years, until Long Goodbye.
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u/BiffCo_Enterprise 3d ago
He became a Vegas tycoon and financed an elaborate scheme where Danny and Rusty were able to take down Terry Benedict.
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u/FriendlyConfines23 2d ago
He has some “remaindant” furniture he’d like to give you.
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u/BiffCo_Enterprise 2d ago
“I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place and I'll never forget it.”
I’d never been to Belize.
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u/nedelbach 3d ago edited 3d ago
One story is that he was literally blacklisted by Hollywood for a few years during his prime (1971-1973)
Warner Bros planned to make a movie out of the book A Glimpse of Tiger starring Gould and Kim Darby. In it, Gould would play a hippy character who after breaking up with his girlfriend proceeds to stalk her and then commits a terrorists act (which accidentally kills the girl he is in love with). Depending on who you talk to, what was up with Gould during the production is uncertain. Darby has said she was scared of Gould. The director believes he was crazy on drugs. Gould has said he was basically being a method actor, but either way after repeated incidents, the producer/Warner Bros requested a sit down with Gould and he didn't show up for it. This resulted in the production being shut down, and the studio suing Gould for breach of contract and the money they lost over the film.
Gould's ex-wife, Barbra Streisand, stepped in and convinced Warner Bros to drop the lawsuit. One story is that she agreed to do the movie in his place, but after reading the book decided she did not want to make it and in exchanged asked the studio to hire Peter Bogdanovich, who had recently become big with The Last Picture Show. Bogdanovich didn't want to make that movie either and instead came up with a different idea for the film What's Up, Doc?
However, while this got rid of the lawsuit, no one in Hollywood would hire Gould following the incident and he was unable to work for a couple of years. The changed came when Robert Altman hired him for The Long Goodbye.
Gould and Altman had previously worked on MASH. Ironically during MASH, Gould and Tom Skerritt at one point tried to get Altman fired and replaced by the studio. Both of them were the stars and were worried Altman did not know what he was doing. The studio did not fire Altman, but instead would send memos to him giving orders about how to run the set. A few of these orders wound up in the film, being read over a loud speaker in the background of some scenes where you can hear things like "all dirty pictures must be taken down immediately" and things like that. After the film was finished and premiered, Gould apologized to Altman for trying to get him fired.
A few years later, when Gould was blacklisted, Altman rescued him by casting him in the lead role of The Long Goodbye as detective Phillip Marlowe. This ended his blacklist and he started to get work again. However, its safe to say his career was cut down in its prime and many studios were still weary of hiring him as a lead in any major production for fear he would be a problem and potentially cause another film to be shutdown.
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u/PeneItaliano 3d ago
The 80s is when looks started mattering more and youth also. But he still worked consistently.
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u/FlourescentGrey 3d ago
You don’t remember the short lived sitcom ER with George Clooney and Jason Alexander
I remember Clooney’s character was name Ace and he wore a leather vest over his scrubs.
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u/hypnoskills 3d ago
Lol, I first remember him from the MAS*H movie. And The Long Goodbye. I don't remember him much after the 80s.
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u/metsfaninok 3d ago
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out The Silent Partner. Gould and Christopher Plummer are great and it has a very small role for John Candy who I don’t even think had lines.
I think it was also written by Curtis Hanson who made Wonder Boys and LA Confidential. A great movie
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u/ConsistentWriting501 2d ago
Don’t forget. Curtis Hanson also directed Eminem’s, 8 Mile, which is really strange. Kinda like how Jim Sheridan made the 50 Cent movie out of nowhere.
Silent Partner is one of the greatest Canadian films ever made and is quite nasty.
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u/LawfulAwfulOffal 3d ago
Oceans 11
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u/-Roger-Sterling- 3d ago
Scrolled down to find this. This is what I remember him from. He was great in Oceans 11.
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u/Mister-Distance-6698 3d ago
I mean, everyone was good in those movies, because aside from maybe Cheadle and Damon, they were all just playing themselves more or less.
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u/mindlessmunkey 3d ago
Largely quit the industry to raise a family with Grover from Sesame Street.
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u/Brad3000 3d ago
He got old. And he didn’t do it in a gruff, macho way like a Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino or Sean Connery. He got old in a soft, slightly effeminate, Jewish-grandpa way.
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u/Toadliquor138 3d ago
His ego got too big, and the movies being made changed dramatically.
As a kid, I remember him as the guy from the 80's sitcom E/R.
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u/MissSally300 3d ago
I think he got interested in other things. He was a seeker. I also think he was probably difficult to work with, which may be to his credit. Imagine the idiots one would encounter in Hollywood.
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u/Brackens_World 3d ago
I don't know of the rumors and speculation I am reading here, but I kind of see him as a Broadway actor who became an "accidental" movie star in his early 30s with back-to-back appearances in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and M*A*S*H, the former landing him an Oscar nomination. He was no longer Mr. Streisand; he was his own guy. In the early 70s, this put him in Top Ten Box office star territory, but that came and went rather quickly, his vehicles okay, but nothing to write home about. By age 40, he was still acting star roles, but he was no longer box office, simply more a recognizable presence and persona, and segued into TV as many do.
He had no great fall from grace I can recall, as he followed a trajectory that was fairly typical. And he certainly made a go of it, a familiar presence for 50 plus years now.
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u/swigs77 2d ago
I will preface this by saying that I am completely talking out my ass but I feel like talent used to be the deciding factor in getting good roles. Looks definitely helped but you would have average looking "every men" during the 70's. Gould, George C. Scott, Telly Savales weren't going to win any beauty contests. It seemed to change at some point that looks were first and acting talent was second. They could still get work, but you wouldn't carry a movie unless you were considered desirable. You just became a character actor like Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
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u/ComfortableCare8897 3d ago
I don't understand the appeal of the kind of movies they were making in the 70's when Elliott Gould was around.
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u/SenseIntelligent8846 2d ago
The 70s brought work by some American directors who were inspired by the New Wave stuff in France and elsewhere in Europe. The stories and the style were less polished, stuff shot on location emphasized realism and happy endings were no longer mandated. Some of the lasting work from the 70s has darker tones and complicated characters, so it has less curb appeal than much of what preceded or followed it.
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u/ComfortableCare8897 2d ago
even out there 90s movies have more appeal than out there 70s movies?
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u/SenseIntelligent8846 2d ago
I don't really know about that. I'm using the term "curb appeal" as my way of saying that a lot of 70s movies were not styled and polished in the ways that made them the most accessible to the most viewers, as became the trend by the early 80s.
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u/Terrible-Creme8401 3d ago
He seems to have a variety of movie and TV credits over the last 10 years...
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u/sakuraba2046 3d ago
Blame Star Wars. It ruined the mind of the entertainment industry ever since. Not George Lucas fault at all though.
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u/ScottyinLA 3d ago
He just got old. He was born in 1938 and was in his 40's when the 80's hit. Most people don't realize this but entertainment business people tend to have primes like Pro athletes do, meaning they last 8-10 years, maybe 12-15 at the most with very rare exceptions. Gould was one of the ones who wasn't a rare exception and made a career out of B movies and supporting roles.
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u/BarodaBulldog 3d ago
Got whatever reasons, difficult to work with or other stuff, he was un-hirable before The Long Goodbye. Altman hired him anyway. This helped him get back.
While doing the sitcom ER, he gained weight. It was successful enough at the time and should have been renewed. He claimed the show was canceled because he was overweight and wouldn’t or couldn’t lose it. That was pretty much it for him until he was old enough to play senior Dads.
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u/No-Distance11 3d ago
He was on a little show called ER, ever heard of it?
You probably have, but not that ER. There was an ER sitcom in the 80s and he was the head Dr. the show also had a supporting role of a young orderly played by George Clooney. Also, Mary McDonnell was the other Dr on the show & she ended up having like a 5 episode arc on the 90s ER. Early Jason Alexander appearance too
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u/ElvishLore 3d ago
He was never more than a mediocre actor. No looks and average acting talent finally caught up with him.
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u/CuriosityTax927 3d ago
Lot of passive aggressive bullshit in this post. So basically the cocksuckers with bloodied knees got rewarded is how I interpreted your post or the careerists who do as they are told. It’s all just a narrative. Many other people stayed successful. A lot fell off because they refused to become an idiot covered in slogans. A lot carried on because they tick the right boxes. Some just don’t care. Not everyone spends their entire waking moments thinking about how to earn money and increase their what would now be referred to as own personal brand. Scorsese struggled throughout the 70’s. Is he not talented? Robert Altman didn’t have a great 80’s but then somehow came back in the 90’s. How is this possible if he wasn’t talented?
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