She released a debut album in 2009, dropped out of public view after a family incident in 2011, and quietly put her songs on Spotify in August 2024 with no announcement at all.
“Classical opera,” Cleo Rose Elliott told a reporter in late 2008, “is the best way to warm up your voice for singing rock. You don’t want to lose your voice rocking out.”
She was twenty-four, three weeks from releasing her first album, and explaining to the Malibu Times how four years of Italian Bel Canto training had pointed her toward Guns N’ Roses instead. She talked about Led Zeppelin, her horses, and her parents. The piece ran on December 31, 2008. It is the last interview on record.
She is forty-one now, lives in Malibu with her parents, and since August 2024 her music has been on Spotify under a label she named after herself.
Table of Contents
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Born | September 17, 1984, Malibu, California |
| Parents | Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross |
| Career | Singer, songwriter, model, actress |
| Debut Album | No More Lies (January 2009) |
| Label | CRE Records (independent) |
| Current | Malibu, California; music on all major streaming platforms |
Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross’s Only Child
Cleo is the only child of two actors whose careers, between them, cover more than five decades of American film.
Her father, Sam Elliott, eighty-one, is known for Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, Mask, the television series 1883, and most recently Landman on Paramount+. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Star Is Born at the 2019 Oscars.
Her mother, Katharine Ross, eighty-six, is an Academy Award-nominated actress best known for The Graduate (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and The Stepford Wives (1975).
In 1969, Sam Elliott appeared as a background extra in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the film that made Katharine Ross famous. The cinematographer on that film was Conrad L. Hall, her husband at the time. So Sam Elliott stood in the background of a movie shot by his future wife’s then-husband, nearly a decade before the two of them would actually speak. Years later, in AARP The Magazine, he put it plainly:
“She was the leading lady. I was a shadow on the wall, a glorified extra in a bar scene.”
Sam Elliott, AARP The Magazine, 2015
They met properly in 1978 on the set of The Legacy, filmed in London. Sam and Katharine married in May 1984, and Cleo Rose Elliott was born four months later on September 17, 1984. It was Sam’s first marriage. For Katharine, who had been married to Joel Fabiani, John Marion, Conrad Hall, and Gaetano Lisi before him, it was her fifth.
Music ran through the family on Katharine’s side. Cleo’s maternal grandfather, Dudley Ross, was a guitarist, composer, and bandleader.
Opera Training and Her Parents’ Record Collection
Cleo grew up in Malibu, encouraged to sing from an early age by her grandmother. She learned the flute and guitar in school, though she considered herself a singer before anything else.
She attended Malibu High School for three years, then transferred to Colin McEwan High School, where she graduated. From 2002 to 2006, she trained at the Joanne Baron/D.W. Brown Acting Studio in Santa Monica, where vocalist and songwriter Charity Chapman taught her Italian opera and Bel Canto technique.
Her own taste came from somewhere else entirely. She told the Malibu Times:
“I got all their old vinyl. So some of my favorite albums are Led Zeppelin, The Cars’ Heartbeat City, the Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach and maybe some old Madonna.”
The full list of influences she named included Guns N’ Roses, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Fiona Apple, Sheryl Crow, Joan Jett, and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. The opera training, by her own account, was practical. It was the technique that kept her voice intact when the music turned loud.
Her first public appearances came earlier, through modeling. In 2003, at eighteen, she appeared at a live SexyHair event and on the cover of the Malibu Times alongside her parents. Modeling stayed brief. Music was the plan.
No More Lies, Her Debut Album
Through Charity Chapman, Cleo connected with producer Bobby Harbry, and the two went into the studio in the spring of 2008. She wrote every song on the album except one.
No More Lies came out in January 2009. On the writing:
“The only way I know to write is straight from my heart. The songs on No More Lies are about love, of course. Finding love and losing it. But it’s not about one specific person.”
Original tracklist:
- Man In Black
- No More Lies
- Keep Holding On
- Angels’ Feet
- Take It Back
At the end of that December 2008 interview, she said she was already working on more songs, and that her parents were happy she had not chosen acting.
What Happened in March 2011
On March 2, 2011, Katharine Ross filed an emergency restraining order against her daughter at the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
In her court statement, Ross wrote: “Cleo verbally and emotionally abused me even as a little girl but became increasingly violent at age 12 or 13.”
According to that statement, the March 2nd incident involved Cleo threatening to kill her mother, kicking in a kitchen cabinet door, cutting the phone line when Ross attempted to call for help, threatening to harm her further, and then stabbing Ross six times in the arm with a pair of scissors. Ross told the court the force was enough to pierce her skin through her shirt, with marks still visible at the time of filing. Cleo was twenty-six years old.
The legal timeline:
- March 2, 2011. The incident occurs at the family’s Malibu home
- March 8, 2011. A judge orders Cleo to stay at least 100 yards from Ross, her home, her vehicle, and her workplace; police are to accompany Cleo onto the property to collect her belongings
- March 30, 2011. Neither Cleo nor Katharine Ross appears at the scheduled hearing, and the restraining order is dropped
Ross said publicly shortly after that the two were working on their relationship. Neither has spoken publicly about what caused the confrontation.
The Years After 2011
By 2017, mother and daughter were appearing together in public again. When Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross co-starred in The Hero, Cleo appeared in coverage around the film and said of her parents: “They’re both so talented and it just makes me so proud of them.”
In September 2018, all three attended the A Star Is Born premiere in Los Angeles. Sam received his Academy Award nomination for the film the following January at the 2019 Oscars.
In 2020, Cleo took an acting role in Murder for Dummies, a short horror-comedy directed by Meredith Red and filmed in Malibu. She played the lead character, Kandy Kane. The film holds an 8.4 rating on IMDB.
In November 2025, she stood on a red carpet in Fort Worth, Texas, with both parents at the Season 2 advance screening of Landman. Sam Elliott told Variety around the same time:
“I’m in the elements, and that’s the life that I chose, that Katharine and I and Cleo, all three of us, embrace.”
CRE Records and the 2024 Spotify Release
On August 9, 2024, Cleo Rose Elliott uploaded her music to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and iHeartRadio through DistroKid, the distribution platform used by independent artists. The label listed across every service is CRE Records, her own imprint, named with her initials.
Three of the five original songs appear on the streaming version:
| Track | Runtime |
|---|---|
| Man In Black | 2:40 |
| No More Lies | 3:28 |
| Keep Holding On | 3:24 |
Angels’ Feet and Take It Back were not included, and no explanation has been given for leaving them out.
There was no press release and no social media post announcing it. Her personal website, cleoroseelliott.com, went up around the same period and links directly to the streaming page as its only listed content. Her Instagram account is private, with a single post visible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Cleo Rose Elliott?
Cleo Rose Elliott is an American singer, songwriter, model, and actress, born on September 17, 1984, in Malibu, California. She is the only child of actors Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross. She released her debut album No More Lies in January 2009, grew up in Malibu, and lives there now.
Who are Cleo Rose Elliott’s parents?
Her father is Sam Elliott, the actor known for Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, 1883, and Landman. Her mother is Katharine Ross, known for The Graduate and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Both are Academy Award-nominated. Sam and Katharine married in May 1984 and remain together.
What happened between Cleo Rose Elliott and Katharine Ross in 2011?
On March 2, 2011, Katharine Ross filed an emergency restraining order against Cleo following a physical incident at their Malibu home. A judge issued the order on March 8, 2011. On March 30, 2011, neither party appeared at the scheduled hearing and the order was dropped. Ross said publicly that the two were repairing their relationship, and by 2017 they were appearing together in public again.
Does Cleo Rose Elliott have music on Spotify?
Yes. On August 9, 2024, she released three songs on all major streaming platforms under her own label, CRE Records, through DistroKid. The tracks are Man In Black, No More Lies, and Keep Holding On, all from her 2009 debut album. No new recordings have been released beyond these three.
Where is Cleo Rose Elliott now, in 2026?
As of 2026, Cleo Rose Elliott lives in Malibu, California, with her parents. She maintains a personal website at cleoroseelliott.com. She attended the Landman Season 2 advance screening in Fort Worth in November 2025 alongside Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross. She has not given a public interview since 2008.
Is Cleo Rose Elliott married?
She has not publicly confirmed any marriage. She was in a long-term relationship with cyclist and artist Randy Christopher Bates from at least 2013, and she has not shared details about her current relationship status.
The songs from that 2008 recording session are still up. Three of them sit under the CRE Records name on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon, available to anyone who looks. She recorded them in a Malibu studio when she was twenty-four, talking about opera warm-ups and horses and the new material she was writing. Sixteen years later they went live on streaming without a headline attached, and they have stayed there since.
