Listening to Sam Elliott's easy baritone makes you want to eat a steak. It must be the lingering effect of hearing his mouth-watering pitch in all those beef ads.
So it's kind of ironic that in his first animated feature, "Barnyard," the actor is the voice of Ben, a patriarchal cow.
"One wouldn't think of me doing this," said Elliott, best known for his rugged cowboy roles. "It's something I've always been intrigued by, and the opportunity came my way, and I jumped at it."
The film centers on Otis, voiced by Kevin James, a real party cow who, like many young adult creatures, isn't as responsible as his father, Ben, would like. There's also a wise old mule with the voice of Danny Glover.
"It's the relationship and the things that his father says to him that carry through the film," Elliott said.
"Barnyard" was produced by Steve Oedekerk and Nickelodeon, two of the producers of "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius."
Elliott said his voice work for them took place over a three-year period.
"What makes it difficult in there is not having anybody to work with for the most part," he said. "Most of the time you're in the recording room and you're doing it by yourself."
While he had not seen the entire film before this interview, he calls it "very funny" and "breathtaking" to look at.
"It's got a lot going for it," Elliott said of the project, done totally with computer-generated images. "One of the great pluses, I think, in terms of the commercial possibilities, is it's great family fare."
Speaking of family, he said his 21-year-old daughter, Cleo, with actress-wife Katharine Ross, is still at home. "And we're happy that she's here," he said.
Cleo's been attending acting school for the past two years.
"She's pretty passionate about it," said her father, the pride evident in that deep voice.
His first credited film role was in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," a 1969 movie produced during the waning days of the studio system. Elliott was under contract to 20th Century Fox.
There were a lot of roles afterward — some small, some bigger.
It was a television role, the TNT film "Conagher," based on a book by Western novel icon Louis L'Amour, that put Elliott on the road to cowboy hero status.
He optioned the book and produced the film with Ross. L'Amour, he said, worked on the screenplay.
Elliott wanted to take a different approach to the way most Westerns had been done. "Everybody looked like they'd just gotten out of a makeup chair. . . . "We were determined to make (Conagher) as real as possible," Elliott said.
Other Westerns followed: "You Know My Name," "The Hi-Lo Country," "Texarkana," "Buffalo Girls."
"Well, I've got a lot of affinity and a lot of real deep feelings for Westerns," he said. "I knew a lot of ranchers. I knew a lot of guys that made a living as cowboys."
Asked about the lack of diversity in Westerns, Elliott responded that while there were black cowboys, their inclusion is not what traditional Westerns have been about.
"As the West has been represented on film in the past and even today, it's all about perpetuating this great American myth. That myth isn't about black cowboys. It's about the guy with the white hat riding off into the sunset."
The 62-year-old actor has done other kinds of films, some serious and some played for laughs. Last year, he was in the parody "Thank You for Smoking," and he's been featured in "The Hulk" and the "The Big Lebowski," among others.
Despite the recent TV success of "Broken Trail" on AMC and the success TNT has had with Westerns, he said TNT is moving in a different direction.
"I've had conversations with them," Elliott said. "They're not in the Western game right now."
He said there are some people who, on some level, look down their noses at that genre of film. Still, Elliott always comes back to it.
"I'm sure not going to give up on them," he said.
E-mail: mhaynes@post-gazette.com