Biography for
Elliott Gould More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

29 August 1938, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Birth Name

Elliott Goldstein

Height

6' 3" (1.91 m)

Spouse

Jennifer Bogart	(9 June 1978 - 18 April 1979) (divorced)
Jennifer Bogart	(8 December 1973 - 5 October 1975) (divorced) 2 children
Barbra Streisand	(21 March 1963 - 9 July 1971) (divorced) 1 child

Trivia

He and Jennifer Bogart had two children before they wed in 1974.

Father, with singer-actress Barbra Streisand, of actor Jason Gould.

He and MASH (1970) co-star Donald Sutherland both own apartments in same Manhattan high-rise luxury building.

Has hosted "Saturday Night Live" (1975) six times.

Was the first actor to play the character of Trapper John, in the film version of MASH (1970). The second actor was Wayne Rogers in the TV series ("M*A*S*H" (1972)) and the third was Pernell Roberts for the TV series "Trapper John, M.D." (1979).

MASH (1970) director Robert Altman originally wanted him to play Duke Forrest. It was only at his request that he played Trapper John.

Was a major box office star in 1970 and 1971, but according to Robert Altman, Gould hadn't been able to find a job for six months when he hired him for The Long Goodbye (1973). Critic Hollis Alpert speculated that Gould's anti-heroic character was extremely popular with campus radicals, and once radicalism declined around the time of Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972, Gould's popularity also declined.

Director Ingmar Bergman denounced Gould as "difficult" after the two worked together in The Touch (1971) ("The Touch") in 1971, one of the great master's least memorable films.

Was originally attached to the movie version of Dr. David Reuben's best-selling sex guide Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), but backed out. The film was made by Woody Allen in 1972.

His son, Sam Gould, was born in January, 1973. He had a daughter before that.

He and his Ocean's Eleven (2001) / Ocean's Twelve (2004) co-stars, Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, all have guest-starred on the TV show "Friends" (1994), though not in the same episodes

Former son-in-law of director Paul Bogart.

Was the lead in the film adaptation of Herman Raucher's novel "A Glimpse of Tiger" and one day walked off the set for reasons then unclear. He had been playing a wild, clownish, unpredictable character. A new director, Peter Bogdanovich, then got involved and the project morphed into what we know as the remake of Bringing Up Baby (1938)--What's Up, Doc? (1972), with the wild, clownish, unpredictable character changing genders and played by his ex-wife, Barbra Streisand.

The only actor to have a cameo appearance in more than one Muppet film: The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984).

Ex brother-in-law of Roslyn Kind.

Starred in The Last Flight of Noah's Ark (1980) and then played God in Noah's Ark: The New Beginning (2008).

Personal Quotes

Success didn't change me. I was already distorted before I became a star.

[1970] The Oscars are some sort of masturbatory fantasy. People think: an Academy Award -- now if I get a parking ticket I don't have to pay it. I don't put the Award down. But, at my sanest, I would rather have a good three-man basketball game than sit here in my monkey suit.

I had come across a paperweight that had a quotation in it, that the greatest artist in the world is an uninhibited child at play. I subscribe to that, and then I mentioned it to a late, wonderful friend, Herb Gardner, who wrote "A Thousand Clowns," and his wife, and they said to me, "And Picasso." And I said: "You keep Picasso, and I'll keep the child. Because as far as I'm concerned, without the spirit of the child, I'm not interested." To save the day, I discovered that the quotation was made by Pablo Picasso.

My only enemy is me.

{On Hollywood's big night] The Oscars are some sort of masturbatory fantasy. People think - 'an Academy Award... now if I get a parking ticket I don't have to pay it'. I don't put the Award down, but, at my sanest, I would rather have a good three-man basketball game than sit there in my monkey suit.