Sam Elliott

In A Star Is Born (2018), Sam Elliott does not compete with Bradley Cooper for the most forceful moment in a scene. His Bobby Maine gives the supporting passages feeling without insisting that we stop to admire the performance. We were moved by that restraint, because it lets the emotion register without adding to a melodrama already doing plenty to secure our attention. The script may hurry towards the next crisis; Elliott does not seem to be waiting for his cue.

The deep voice and Western drawl can do a good deal before a character has said anything of substance. Decades of Western television and film roles made Elliott an obvious choice for cowboys and tough men, with the moustache helping the introduction. Mask (1985) brought wider notice, while Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) kept him firmly within the Western. By The Big Lebowski (1998), in which he played the Stranger, the familiar figure had become something he was prepared to embrace. The danger is that recognition can spare a script the trouble of writing a person.

The later move towards leading and prominent parts matters because it offers more room for a character to develop. The Hero (2017) gave him a lead written specifically for him; 1883 (2021) put him at the centre of another Western as Shea Brennan. Neither change requires him to abandon the qualities that made him recognisable. We are more interested in what happens when that authority meets uncertainty than in seeing him handed another character who already knows the answer.

Bradley Cooper, directing as well as acting in A Star Is Born, makes good use of Elliott's restraint. We recommend the film, with a reservation about how little room the second half leaves for its rising singer's story. Elliott helps the supporting passages matter without demanding a slower, more solemn film every time he appears. That is useful judgement in a musical romance whose songs must carry as much feeling as its dialogue. Start with Bobby Maine if the voice is all that comes to mind.