Elliott Gould biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actor. Born Elliott Goldstein on August 29, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York. Gould's parents, Bernard and Lucille Goldstein, were Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and Gould's father worked in the garment industry. In 1943, when Gould was only 5 years old, his father was drafted into the army for service in World War II; in order to support the family, Elliott's mother took up work selling artificial flowers to local beauty shops. With his father away, Gould developed into a shy, and somewhat troubled, child. He recalls feeling "a degree of vulnerability, of not wanting to make a fool of myself. I didn't feel abnormal, but I certainly didn't feel normal."

Thinking that elocution lessons might help her son break out of his childhood shell, Gould's mother signed him up for Charlie Lowe's show business school for kids, where Gould studied acting, singing and dancing. Gould excelled—particularly at tap dancing—and his mother soon transformed into an overbearing stage mother, dragging him around the city for small performances and fashion shows. "I thought he liked it," Lucille Goldstein later said, "but maybe it took too much out of him emotionally." Nevertheless, she insisted that all of her overzealous parenting "was done out of love. I wouldn't leave any stone unturned as far as this child went. I'd cut off my arm for this child."

Natural Talent

Elliott Gould was a successful child model for several years, but, according to his mother, "by 12 he was a has-been. He was too old to be cute." But just as his modeling career was winding down, Gould began performing on local television variety shows, and it was at this point that his mother and Charlie Lowe decided to change his stage name from Goldstein to Gould. Although Gould claims that he was never happy as a child performer, he never rebelled against his mother or Lowe. "I didn't know then that there was a choice, that there could be another kind of life," he explains.

Gould's mother enrolled him in the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, and during his teenage years Gould spent his summers performing dance and comedy routines at hotels in the Catskills. His father recalls, "When an entertainer needed a stooge, Elliott would be the one they'd choose. He could do a dozen dialects—German, Italian, Jewish, all of them." As a teenager, Gould also developed into an impressively talented impersonator. He sat next to strangers at restaurants, knocked on neighbors' doors and called up relatives pretending to be a different person each time. In fact, it was Gould's flair for impersonation that landed him his first big break as an actor.