Stars coming to El Paso for annual Plaza Classic Film Festival
Actresses Kathleen Quinlan and Katherine Ross and actor Sam Elliott will make appearances during this year’s Plaza Classic Film Festival.
Katharine Ross co-starred in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Sam Elliott played a bit part as “Card Player Number Two.” The couple began dating while making The Legacy, which was directed by Richard Marquand (Return of the Jedi), and married in 1984.
Katharine Ross appeared on various television shows in the early 1960s before receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Elaine Robinson in 1967’s The Graduate. She won England’s BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her work as Etta Place in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and again for Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. She also received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Voyage of the Damned.
Sam Elliott, whose parents were from El Paso, was a big hit at last year’s PCFF, appearing for the U.S. premiere of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. He was nominated this year for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born, for which he also won a Best Supporting Actor award from the National Board of Review. Sam received the Plaza Classic Award last year for his more than 50-year career, including movies and TV shows such as Mask, Lifeguard, Conagher, Tombstone, and The Big Lebowski.
Kathleen Quinlan will appear for on-stage interviews with Apollo 13 at 7 p.m. Friday, August 9, and the drama Clara’s Heart at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, August 10. Both will be in the Plaza Theatre.
Quinlan received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress for her nuanced portrayal of Marilyn Lovell – opposite Tom Hanks’ astronaut Jim Lovell – in Ron Howard’s thrilling Apollo 13, about the NASA crew that narrowly escaped death on an aborted mission to the moon. She plays the aggrieved mother of a 12-year-old Neil Patrick Harris in Clara’s Heart, which features a screenplay and cameo by Mark Medoff, the Tony Award-winning Las Cruces, N.M., playwright and longtime New Mexico State University professor who died April 23.
Ms. Quinlan’s appearance is part of the Plaza Classic’s tribute, Mark Medoff: A Brilliant Mind. It includes screenings of his Oscar-nominated Children of a Lesser God and City of Joy. Ms. Quinlan stars in the forthcoming Walking With Herb, Medoff’s final screenplay.
Tickets for the movies in the Plaza Classic Film Festival are available at the Plaza Theatre Box Office and at Ticketmaster.com. Click here for a complete festival schedule.
