Sam Elliott is happy to be in the movie version of The Golden Compass, in which he plays a balloonist flying all over the world, named Lee Scoresby. "Luck of the draw," he told Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen. "It just came my way, and I was lucky that it did." According to the interview, Elliott was reluctant to accept the role at first, because it was more or less a variation on the cowboy persona that he has played all throughout his life. "There's not a lot of guys around, apparently, to play these cowboys because I seem to do a lot of them." Then the director of the movie, Chris Weitz, wrote him a note. "I couldn't not do it after he wrote this note. He talked about me and my parallels to this character Scoresby. He was very generous in the way he put it, referring to me as an iconic - which is always kind of a daunting phrase - laconic, classic American cowboy. I used to kind of think, 'God, all I do is westerns.' But I've gotten over that, I've grown up and now I'm just thankful that I had this career rather than wishing I had opportunities to do a few things outside the Western box, more than I have. Because I enjoy that."
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