page_title: Katharine Ross
section_title: 1967–1971: Mainstream breakthrough
hierarchical_section_title: Katharine Ross / Biography / 1967–1971: Mainstream breakthrough
caption_attribution_description: English: Katharine Rosse in publicity photo for Games (1967)
context_page_description: Katharine Juliet Ross is an American film, stage, and television actress. Her accolades include one Academy Award nomination, one BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. A native of Los Angeles, Ross spent most of her early life in the San Francisco Bay area. After attending Santa Rosa Junior College for one year, Ross joined The Actors Workshop in San Francisco, and began appearing in theatrical productions.
  Ross made her film debut in the Civil War-themed drama Shenandoah, and had supporting parts in the comedies Mister Buddwing and The Singing Nun before being cast in Curtis Harrington's Games, a thriller co-starring James Caan and Simone Signoret. At Signoret's recommendation, Ross was cast as Elaine Robinson in Mike Nichols' comedy-drama The Graduate, which saw her receive significant critical acclaim, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, a BAFTA nomination, and Golden Globe win for New Star of the Year. She garnered further acclaim for her roles in two 1969 western films: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, for both of which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress.
context_section_description: At Universal, Ross starred in a television film with Doug McClure, The Longest Hundred Miles (1967), then co-starred in Curtis Harrington's psychological thriller, Games (1967) with Simone Signoret and James Caan, which she later called "terrible". Some time in 1967, Ross divorced her second husband, Marion.
  Ross's breakthrough role was as Elaine Robinson in Mike Nichols' comedy-drama film The Graduate (1967), opposite Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft. She had been recommended to director Nichols by Signoret. This part, in which Ross plays a young woman who elopes with a young man who had an affair with her mother, earned Ross an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and won her a Golden Globe Award as New Star of the Year. Commenting on her critical accolades at the time, Ross said, "I'm not a movie star...that system is dying and I'd like to help it along."
  She later said at this time "I got sent everything in town but Universal wouldn't loan me out." After eight months she was in Hellfighters (1968) playing the daughter of John Wayne who romances Jim Hutton.
  Ross was cast as a Native American woman in Universal's western film Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), starring Robert Redford. In August 1968, she signed a new contract with Universal to make two films a year for seven years. She turned down several roles (including Jacqueline Bisset's role in Bullitt) before accepting the part of Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), co-starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, which was another massive commercial hit. She was paid $175,000 for her performance in the film. For her roles in both Tell Them Willie Boy is Here and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ross won the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. After completing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ross married the film's cinematographer, three-time Oscar-winner Conrad Hall. 
  She was dropped by Universal in the spring of 1969, for refusing to play a stewardess in Airport, another role that went to Jacqueline Bisset. She eventually got out of her Universal contract. However this meant later on she lost out to Tuesday Weld on a film she really wanted to do, an adaptation of Play It as It Lays, because it was a Universal production. Instead, she had a starring role in the drama Fools (1970) opposite Jason Robards.
caption: Ross in Games (1967)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "90", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "747", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "850"}