(As always, this biography is in progress and there will be more added on in the not-too-distant future.)

Born Elliott Goldstein in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Bernard and Lucille Goldstein (née Raver) on Monday, August 29, 1938. At age 8, Elliott was enrolled in The Professional Children’s School of Manhattan and began appearing in local television shows. It was at this point when his name was changed from Goldstein to Gould.

His family lived for a year in West Orange, New Jersey, when Elliott was a teenager.

Some jobs between acting gigs included work as a night-elevator man, vacuum cleaner salesman, and a toy demonstrator at Macy’s. He also worked at Gimbels and Bloomingdales.

The real start of his career was at age 18 when Elliott appeared on stage as a chorus boy in such Broadway musicals as Rumple, Say Darling and Irma La Douce.

In 1962, during rehearsals for I Can Get It For You Wholesale, he met another up and coming theatre performer, Barbra Streisand, who became his wife a year later and bore him his first son, Jason.

After several other projects in the early sixties, such as the Carol Burnett television special Once Upon A Mattress where Elliott played the role of the jester, bad luck was to hamper his sporadic moments of activity, for example, the closing after 5 days of the Broadway musical Drat The Cat (there was a newspaper strike and the play’s opening went unheard of).

But Elliott formed a production company with his wife, “Ellbar Productions”, and learned a great deal about the “business” side of show business though none of the television shows the company wanted to develop had any takers.

In 1965, Elliott made an inauspicious film debut in a William Deterle directed film entitled Quick, Let’s Get Married after being offered the role of Nicky Arnstein (and immediately refusing it) in the London production of the musical Funny Girl.

His career would take an upward turn when he was cast in The Night They Raided Minsky’s in a small but showy part and then his breakout role in Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, in 1969, which was to garner him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The “Star for an Uptight Age” was born.

The next decade was a period of great activity for Gould when he starred in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, Getting Straight, his owned produced masterpiece Little Murders, Move and Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch. From The Long Goodbye, who many consider his greatest cinematic contribution, to The Silent Partner by way of California Split, Busting, Capricorn One, Harry And Walter Go To New York, and A Bridge Too Far, Gould proved himself a staple of arguably the greatest era of filmmaking, the 1970s.

In 1971 and 1972, Elliott Gould continued with another of one of his most important roles, that of father, of Molly and Sam, with his second wife, Jennifer Bogart.

If the seventies established Elliott as a counter-culture icon in film, the eighties was to see him exploring television as well in roles that highlighted his warm fuzziness – but with an edge nonetheless. There was the underrated situation comedy ER, and made for TV projects such as The Rules Of Marriage and the excellent Vanishing Act. Working in straight-to-video flicks and European productions proved more filler than anything else but Gould continued to take risks in interesting character roles that had a scant audience but most probably helped keep the bills paid. There were good acting choices made throughout the decade though such as Act Of Betrayal, Inside Out, and The Trial Of the Chicago Eight.

He made a triumphant return to form with a memorable appearance in the gangster epic Bugsy in 1991, along with brilliant turns in the little-seen Doggin’ Around, Hoffman’s Hunger and The Glass Shield and of course TV was always a reliable source to showcase his talent, e.g., the therapist in Billy Crystal’s Sessions was the perfect role for Gould’s shaggy laid back charm. but it was the series Friends a few years later that put Gould back in the public’s consiousness in a big way. As Jack Gellar, father of Monica and Ross, Gould popped up regularly to the delight of his new found fans in all of 10 seasons.

A new generation of directors who idolized him when they were young were keen to cast Gould in their projects, most notably Tony Kaye, Noah Baumbach, and Steven Soderbergh, which led to acclaimed work in American History X, Kicking And Sceaming and Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13 as well as Soderbergh’s mini-series K Street.

As a seasoned actor entering his 7th decade, Gould seems determined to contribute more fine work as seen in such features as Open Window, St. Urbain’s Horseman and The Caller. He was asked to play the part of Tevye in the London production of The Fiddler on the Roof,  Chaim Topol (who played Tevye in the film version) even stopped him on the street to ask him to take over this coveted role. But it remains to be seen if he’ll take on the part.

He is a proud grandfather to Henry and Daisy and plans on working well into great-grandfatherhood.

Gould has served on the Screen Actors Guild National Board of Directors for the past six years.

His next film projects include Expecting Mary, Clean Out and Shadow Play, as well as a highly-touted appearance on Law and Order.