“Landman” Season 2 star Sam Elliott has been around the block and then some. Though he’s rarely the leading man, he’s often the best character in any project he appears in, bringing a certain swagger and charm that’s hard to beat. He’s starred in any number of classic TV shows and movies, from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” to “Tombstone” and “The Big Lebowski.” While known for his Western roles playing gritty, world-weary cowboys, Elliott himself doesn’t count any of those classics as his best film. Believe it or not, the actor himself cited 2017’s “The Hero” as his personal favorite.
During an interview to promote “The Hero,” Elliott admitted that it wasn’t easy to pick his favorite movie, adding that it was often not about the films themselves. Instead, it was about the people he’d worked with on those movies, and “The Hero” topped them all. The film puts Elliott into a role that may have felt closer to home than most: He’s Lee Hayden, an aging Western movie star. Hayden faces a terminal health diagnosis and must reconcile his wrongs, including his difficult relationship with his adult daughter Lucy (played by “Jessica Jones” actress Krysten Ritter).
Part cowboy, part Elliott himself, Lee Hayden offers a chance for Elliott to disappear into a different kind of role, and he delivers a powerful performance as a man who must take a long, hard look back at his own life. While it didn’t receive much attention at the time, the fact that it’s the actor’s favorite role is a testament to how underrated it truly is.
The Hero was written specifically for Sam Elliott
According to Sam Elliott, plenty of filmmakers have told him that they planned on writing something with him in mind over the years, and the projects simply never materialized. That was, until the mid-2010s, when two filmmaker fans of his began developing “The Hero.” According to Elliott, writer-director Brett Haley (who co-penned the script with Marc Basch) created the role of Lee Hayden just for him. Having heard this all before, he was skeptical.
“I didn’t believe him, but then a couple months later, here comes this treatment,” Elliott told Collider. At the time, the working title of the film was “Iceberg,” which immediately drew his attention. “[The treatment] really rang true to me in comparing an actor’s career and his one success to an iceberg,” he said. “That what you see is not necessarily the most important stuff that holds it all up.”
Ultimately, it was the character that convinced Elliott to sign on for the film above all else. “A lot of it certainly parallels me,” the actor admitted, and that made the opportunity too good to turn down. However, the truth is that Elliott’s actual life has not been quite as messy as the one Hayden lives in the movie, with his character making some bad decisions. “I think the real difference is that Lee just f***ed his life up,” Elliott told Collider. “He f***ed his life up in pursuit of this career.”