Eldergays, tell me about Ellen Burstyn

yes, she is

While she has occasionally been in some less than wonderful films, I cannot think of a performance by her that has been less than truthful and fully realized. I'd start with "The Last Picture Show," then "Alice Doesn't Liver Here Anymore," "Resurrection," and "Requiem for a Dream."

[quote]Requiem for a Dream.

Overrated dreck.

She’s the primary force that steers “The Exorcist” away from camp to authentic horror. You can feel her anguish, desperation and confusion as the mother. She brings an existential element into the movie that elevates the material. Wonderful actress. Her interview with Oprah was also fascinating. She came across as highly thoughtful and self aware.

Now I vaguely remember her from Last Picture Show which I saw maybe 5 years ago. I think I was more impressed with Cloris so I'll have to re-watch.

OP - just out of curiosity why are you turning to eldergays for info?

She's still alive. She's still working. I don't watch House of Cards - but in 2016 she must ave been part of a story arc.

Requiem for a Dream was released in 2000. It was directed by Darren Aronofsky.

Some of your peers must be familiar with her work. .

A DVD of King of Marvin Gardens has been sitting on my shelf.

Now I want to watch it.

She was the only cast member who didn't want to do the sequel to Last Picture Show, even though her character is prominent in the book.

I only ask because I think her best decade, according to IMDB, was the 1970s and I'm kind of lost regarding films from that decade (before I was born) unless it's something too huge to miss like The Godfather and Cuckoo's Nest. I'm a big Jack Nicholson fan so Marvin Gardens was a fluke find and now I'm intrigued by her. Maybe she reminds me of my mother.

It's not a great movie but Same Time, Next Year is a great display of her talent.

For me, she ranks up there in my personal pantheon of Judy Davis, Glenda Jackson, Diane Wiest, Charlotte Rampling, Julie Christie, Anne Bancroft, Vanessa Redgrave and Latoya Jackson.

She should have won the oscar for Requiem for a Dream, yet Julia Roberts won. I think we all know who had the better performance.

She is one of only a handful of Actors to win the Triple Crown of acting. Oscar-Emmy-Tony winner.

Excellent in many things. Go watch Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore to start.

Is she worth your attention? Seems to me the answer is no- rather you’re not worthy of the interest.

She was wonderful in "The Exorcist." She conveys all the pain, anguish, and horror of a mother watching her daughter quite literally become someone else.

She used to act under the name Ellen McRae during the early part of her career, up until around 1969.

I remember she appeared on the soap "The Doctors" in 1965.

She did a lot of episodic TV starting (according to imdb) in 1958 and all through the 1960s. For example, she appeared as a nun in a 1967 episode of "The Big Valley". Karen Black appeared in the same Big Valley episode.

Ellen doesn't burst here anymore.

Her short-lived ABC sitcom, The Ellen Burstyn Show, lasted only one season but it had potential.

Top billed co-star was a very young Megyn Mullaly, and the last credit ( the one Joan Collins always got in Dynasty) went to DL fave Elaine Stritch!

Should've gone Supporting for "Requiem", would've won hands down. Ego kept her in Lead I think. No one was beating Julia that year, though Burstyn is amazing in her role.

She's great but a friend used to have issues with her because when she smiles, her eyes don't smile with her. He's right. And Kael used to get angry when she would talk "baby talk" as if to make up for her age (see her scenes with hot Sam Shepherd in "Reserection".)

sorry for shitty spelling, am typing with keyboard in my lap

Require For A Dream was a masterpiece. Burton's performance was incredible, breaks your heart. She's one of my favorite actresses.

Look for a TV movie she did with Alan Bates and Teri Garr called “Pack of Lies”. She was excellent in it.

Totally freaking robbed of the Oscar for "Resurrection."

Has she ever commented on Linda Lavin?

Any other year, R24. Nobody was beating Spacek that year unless it was MTM in a much smaller role (should have gone for Supporting). I agree it's one of Burstyn's best works but it made $1.98 at the box office. Then again, so did "Great Santini" and "Melvin and Howard" and they showed up at Oscars too. Back then people were actually surprised when adult subject films didn't find their audience -- unlike now in Comic Book Nation.

Much more believable as the characters she portrays than the oh so revered Streep who is an impressionist.

She played Art Carney's daughter in "Harry and Tonto" and Pauline Kael correctly noted that she seemed to be trying to say something that the script couldn't contain. She also said that she didn't think Carney would have had a daughter like her. The most common question about H&T was why Burstyn was so hostile to Melanie Mayron, a hitchhiker traveling with Carney. Josh Mostel calls her a cunt and it got applause in the theater.

Burstyn was head of the Actors' Studio, if I remember correctly

Jane Fonda was the first choice to play Chris Neill in the Exorcist, but turned the part down

I was the first choice to play Pazuzu, but I had a scheduling conflict.

Rest in peace, Miss Ellen.

In The Last Picture Show, you first see Jacy Farrow, a small town princess, played by Cybill Shepherd in her first big role, and then you meet her mother Lois, and realize the prettiest girl in town is a pale shadow of Mom. The history between her character and Ben Johnson's is way more compelling than Duane's and Jacy's story arc, and when he dies, the shot of her alone at his grave--done entirely in a long shot in silhouette--is one of the most emotionally charged moments in any movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. I did an image search but came up dry though.

Warning: The King of Marvin Gardens SUCKS

Warning: Same Time, Next Year SUCKS

Resurrection is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Same Time, Next Year has the misfortune of Alan Alda.

I've never cared for her. She turns me off.

In the HBO movie Mrs. Harris, Burstyn received an Emmy nomination for her performance, even though her character only appears on screen for 11 seconds and has only two lines. She was shocked when she heard about the nomination. She didn't know the producers had submitted her. She said something like, (paraphrasing) "Next I hope to be nominated for a movie I didn't appear in at all!".

Was Alan Alda in the original cast of the Broadway play Same Time Next Year too? If he was, I'm glad I saw it with Ted Bessell and Loretta Swit.

Joining the love for Resurrection. Such an incredible film. That ending! Ellen's beautiful, understated performance. One of the greats.

I prefer Gena Rowlands

R40 it was Charles Grodin.

[quote]I watched The King of Marvin Gardens for the first time the other night for Jack and discovered Ellen.

One of my favorite performances of the 70s, to be honest, and still so underappreciated. I also think her performance in Last Picture Show was better, and subtler, than Leachman's.

None of these so called female "stars" of today (Im looking at YOU hag Streep) have a tenth of the talent of Ellen. Requiem made me cry,and not many movies have.

Kudos to Ellen for doing nude scenes late in her career in the '80s in The Ambassador. She still looked good.

She does full-frontal in TROPIC OF CANCER, a 1970 adaptation of the Henry Miller novel with Rip Torn. It's not a good movie, but it does have more instances of the word "c**t" in the script than any movie I've ever seen.

Agree that KING OF MARVIN GARDENS is a terrible movie, though Burstyn is fine in it.

Much as I like Burstyn in ALICE, the Oscar should have gone to Rowlands' amazing work in WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE.

I remember in "The Excorcist" she was playing a movie star with a possessed daughter and I've often thought, "She's a fabulous actress, but she never became a movie star like she played one of her biggest hit films." I loved it when the cop asked her for her autograph in "The Exorcist" and told he couldn't forget her in the movie "Angel" which was fictional for the film, but I again I thought, Burstyn would have been great in the lead of a film titled "Angel."

closeted

I love Ellen and Faye Dunaway playing sisters in The Yards. It's an underrated gem. Faye gives her most understated performance ever and her and Ellen are key to the plot.

They actually look like they could be related there.

Yes, I agree. I love the look Faye has in the film that is different than her normal "glamourous" look and she and Ellen really seem like sisters in their roles.

I have to chime in about Resurrection. One of my favorite movies ever. Was introduced to it in the 90s by my first (older) boyfriend. Terrific, terrific film and Ellen was amazing.

The ending of Resurrection remains one of my ALL TIME favorite movie endings.

Closeted?

R15 right on. i'm glad this person is asking for suggestions for more of ellen burstyn's work. but the way the question is asked and the viewpoint is exactly what has gone wrong with culture, and with the next generation. the doomed pervasive thinking and feeling now: is this-award winning actress/important writer/classical artist/film director i don't find hot/etc.-"worth my attention?" MY attention? wow. i don't know. what body of work and life accomplishments do you have at this point that even allows for such a question? and such a viewpoint? it is an inverted way of looking at art, culture, and life. sad. ps. in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, RESURRECTION, and ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE she is absolutely brilliant. and worth anyone's attention.

Ellen Burstyn is one of those rare treasures.

I read her memoir and there was a part where she goes to stay with her pervert father and (it sounded like) she

Really sick.

... sounded like she began a sexual relationship with him ...

I saw "Resurrection" a month or so after I was jilted by my bf, who had dystonia, like one of the characters in the film (whom she "cures"). I remember sitting in the Varsity in Evanston, watching that scene, and weeping. Like others, I loved the ending--and I have no spiritual beliefs, so it was simply the truth of the drama that moved me--and maybe a sense of hope.

I love Resurrection enough to forgive the manipulative ending.

Glad to see so many others love Resurrection - and that ending.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore has one of the most realistic mother and son relationships I can remember onscreen.

She was AWESOME in One Flew Over The Cukoos NesT!

JUST KIDDING Louise Fletcher!

"Nobody should vote for Best Actress this year since the nominees are so lame." - Ellen Burstyn (and I paraphrase). Louise Fletcher was NOT amused.

(Fletcher should've been in Supporting -- oddly enough, a very crowded field that year, they could've added 10 more worthy performances, many from "Nashville" alone. I was going to say that was the year Shelley Duvall should've won for "3 Women", for which she wasn't even nominated, but my math is off since that feels too soon. Still, isn't there a big female performance from 1975 that should've been up and should've won in hindsight?)

(I did a search and there are plenty of other Oscarphiles all over the net weighing in on the matter. I like the one who suggests they should have pushed Ronee Blakely for Lead and she would've won (I agree that it is one of the all time greatest performances committed to film). And, yes, her screentime is limited but so is Fletcher's. I like the idea of that work having won -- and Fletcher still could've won in Supporting for hers).

P.S. The general idea of the missing nominee is Karen Black in "Day of the Locust". Not sure I agree with that though.

I think Burstyn was jealous of Fletcher. The role of the nurse had been offered to every major actress including Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Anne Bancroft,etc and no one wanted it. I think at one point Tueday Weld was offered it. Burstyn felt the role was anti-feminist and also turned down Misery and Cinderella Liberty because at the end of the film the woman abandons her kid. I would think the role of the nurse in Cukoos Nest would be wanted by every actress even if the role is that of very troubled woman. Such a meaty part.....

It's ironic Burstyn turned down One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next and went on to further success while Louise Fletcher took part in The Exorcist II--as a psychiatrist mother figure similar to Burstyn--and never recovered (and neither did Linda Blair).

She did a fair amount of TV work in the 60's under the name Ellen McRae. I recently saw her on a Perry Mason.

I've seen this episode of Suspense Theatre a couple of times. She plays twin sisters. One gets bumped off at the beginning.

SPOILER ALERT!

Hopefully you didn't read the spoiler......

She had a memorable turn as Stabler's mother on "SVU".

[quote] I'm glad I saw it with Ted Bessell and Loretta Swit.

I saw it with Gary Collins and Sue Ane Langdon! Top that!

I saw it with Jack Klugman and Brett Sommers

Can you spot Ellen in this 1964 flic, For Those Who Think YOung? She has 20 words in the movie.

The hell with Ellen Burstyn. The movie features Gilligan's Island's Bob Denver AND Tina Louise!!!!

Fletcher played Nurse Ratchet to perfection, but generally she's not the most interesting actress out there, which is why her career didn't go anywhere.

"I like the one who suggests they should have pushed Ronee Blakely for Lead and she would've won."

I doubt it. Anyway, NASHVILLE is an ensemble piece and there's no real "leading" character in it. I think Fletcher wound up in the lead actress category just because the competition was so slim and she had an excellent chance of winning.

"The general idea of the missing nominee is Karen Black in "Day of the Locust". Not sure I agree with that though."

I don't. I've never really gotten the love for Black - she's one of the most unsubtle actresses ever, though she can be fun in smaller doses (love her in NASHVILLE). She's too old for the character in LOCUST, and the film isn't very good anyway. I finally saw FIVE EASY PIECES a few years ago and thought Susan Anspach was much better than Black, even though the latter got the acclaim undeservedly for what I thought was a Method acting exercise. The film itself doesn't age well.

The King of Marvin Gardens and Five Easy Pieces are the two films from the '70s that I never get tired of watching. Nicholson's character's monologue at the start of TKOMG alone is worth the price of admission.

We're STILL touring STNY!

They might have gotten away with Ronee as the "Lead" female in "Nashville" since she was (and is) the one used to rep the movie -- the Loretta Lynn queen. She was on the cover of "Newsweek" or one f those and the image of her with the big hair and the white dress was always the one I saw in the press long before I was old enough to see the film. And, in some ways, the movie circles around her -- the arrival at the airport, the collapse, the hospital, the comeback concert and the final big finish where she pays for it all. And most of the characters are connected to Barbara Jean too from her rival Connie White to the campaign rep trying to get her to sing for his candidate to her lawyer and the military vet obsessed with her. And the guy with the violin case.

One or two more scenes might've clenched it. And I love that she wrote her breakdown monologue (she was supposed to just faint again but wanted to go one step further).

In my continuing lust for John Smith and Robert Fuller, I was watching an episode of "Laramie" the other day and came upon the show with a young Ellen McCrae as the damsel in danger of being assaulted by the boy's VPL's as they got close to her. Thankfully, she was being looked after by her feisty, younger brother, a fresh faced and juicier lad named Tom Skerritt. (Try to tell me that young Tom wasn't hit on continuously when he first started out....gorgeous.)

Is Edna Rae any relation to Jeff Gillooley?

I dated her niece in college a few times. She once showed me a photo from the most recent Christmas and there on the back row was Aunt Ellen. Looking out of place but I was probably projecting that. Read her book (or listen to her doing the audio book). She's got a few screws loose but she's honest enough to paint a truthful picture, which is cool. There was always a weighty sadness to her but that is what made her such a great actor, I think (though it's also why I never bought her in lightweight material).

R73 for me Burstyn stole the show in USA Network’s POLITICAL ANIMALS (2012), playing the tactless drunken mother of Sigourney Weaver & the grandmother of Jimmy Wolk & Sebastian Stan.

That's it R84. I never understand why she isn't considered greater than Streep, Dench, Mirren or Smith? I think it's her kind of wild and sketchy life. She's like a film noir heroine. She has told lies and many others of omission. She had a lot of names, a lot of careers, a lot of men and a lot of troubles. She's a lovely looking older woman but her voice and eyes still burn with passions and demons that are not light hearted. Her book is fascinating and her work is often astounding. She gets in deep, she doesn't do superficial and she most certainly doesn't need to do impersonations. She's a capital A actress. She tells the truth.

[quote]For Those Who Think YOung

And we all know which soft drink company created that slogan, don't we?

This is a rarely seen Burstyn TV movie from the '80s that always stayed with me. Haunting story of a mother's search for her missing son.

Into Thin Air - 1985

"Pretty actress Ellen McRae shows off for the camera"

In one interview, she talked about being on the Jackie Gleason show. They traveled from NYC to beautiful Miami Beach by train, which sounded like a good party. She didn't reveal anything scandalous. It was just fun to hear about a very different era of television.

She's brilliant in a little movie called Twice in a Lifetime with Gene Hackman and Ann Margaret. Hackman leaves wife Burstyn for AM which pisses off everyone including dykey daughter Amy Madigan. Everyone does great work with a LifetimeTV script but Ellen is the standout.

1960's Ellen

Madigan got the (undeserved) Oscar nomination for "Twice...". Ally Sheedy was worse than ever. And Kael hated Burstyn in this, talking about how she wins at Bingo and "carries on like a ninny" or something.

An old boyfriend of mine wrote and is producing the movie she is directing for the first time.

I've never liked Mrs. Harris in any of the performances of her's I've seen r93.

I just saw Same Time, Next Year and didn't care much for it. ** (out of 4)

I have the answer for R86. The reason Burstyn isn't considered greater than Streep, Dench, Mirren or Smith, is because she isn't. Comparing her to the last three is laughable, and though I am not a Streep fan, I'd rather watch her than Burstyn who I find as ordinary as tap water.

Have always found she takes herself way too seriously as an "act-OR." And she's kind of bland and blah. Overrated and not a fan.

She looks great for her age though.

Explain how or why Mirren, Dench and Smith are greater than Burstyn R97. Don't just make proclamations, why are they better actresses in your humble opinion -with details please?

They all have greater range, demonstrated by having done the classics on stage, which I don't believe Burstyn has. Maybe that's a Brit thing, but they are certainly more exciting to watch. Burstyn is limited and has a terrible speaking voice. I re-watched Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore recently and was underwhelmed by her.

l/l-

We can't all be a National Treasure, R100.

What is with people thinking Brits are better at everything?

I like her. She has a vulnerable sexy quality the Brits don't.

And I like her voice.

Years ago I dated someone who had done contract work for her and I got a tour of her place (she wasn't there). Excellent taste, but a creepy/interesting wall of masks.

"What is with people thinking Brits are better at everything?"

It's a long-standing prejudice that, I think, comes from the fact that British actors tend to be more rigorously trained vocally, so they have a lot of clever tricks up their sleeve that they know how to use to maximum effect. Much of what British actors have historically been famous for has to do with externals, and only in the last few decades have the more influential and useful aspects of American training been increasingly integrated in British acting schools, which is how the new crop of actors like Oldman, Roth, Day-Lewis, etc. developed. British actors tend to have stronger technique, but they need the ability to dig deeper emotionally - something only the best British actors were able to do in the past.

That and America doesn't really develop real stage stars any longer since actors tend to be more focused on the better-paying jobs in film and TV. There are a few exceptions, but I recall a play with Blythe Danner recently where her character says "There are stars on Broadway, but there are no Broadway stars." That is - by and large - very true.

Her performance as Alison Janney's birth mother in "Mom" is wonderful; you get the feeling the mother had done something much worse than abandoning the daughter, and that turns out to be right. Burstyn did her homework; the following season news comes that the Burstyn character has died, hadn't told the daughter she'd had a son after abandoning Janney, kept and raised *him*. Breathdaking and provides a critical bit of back story for Janney's character.

I've always found Ellen Burstyn's nose job very disturbing.

I was in the Faye Dunaway camp in the 70s. Burstyn just didn't have enough glamour. But I've come to appreciate her much more as time's gone by.

Her autobiography is very honest. She talks about being tied to a scary schizophrenic she felt responsible to care for (and afraid to leave) for many years, and sleeping with a dress manufacturer for a job when she was a starving Texas model.

Good movie, op. My partner took me to see The King of Marvin Gardens for my 50th birthday back in 1972. I just adored Jack from Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. And, there we discovered Ellen! We loved her and caught The Exorcist with her the following year. Fantastic.

She was okay. Some good performances, some merely competent ones that could've been done just as well by another actress.

I'm TeamFaye too and I think Dunaway would've been better in The Exorcist. Her air of glamorous bitchiness would've played up that Chris MacNeil is in fact an actress. It strikes me as being kinda '70s that -- she didn't even need to have a career, but she did, so why up use that angle. The performance definetly isn't Oscar-worthy in Burstyn's hands, done well enough, but it's not really suppose to be about her anyway.

It's silly I think to put on her on par with Streep (no matter how reviled she is by a contingent on DL find her) or Dunaway, Smith, Dench, etc... In something like the boring (really, don't bother) SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR one actively craves someone like Streep. Burstyn doesn't really do enough to create a sense of changing in the character. The film doesn't really come together but Burstyn doesn't help. I wonder what Fonda might've done there too: she wasn't *that* much better than Burstyn but she might've better fit: see how she went from THE CHAPMAN REPORT to KLUTE to Vietnam to COMING HOME to workout videos.

But where does Burstyn fall in the grand scale of '70s actresses? Better than that awful Jewess Linda Lavin of TV's ALICE of course, but also below Streep (rolling eyes at mention of Kirsten Dunst) and Dunaway. And the rest... I'm not sure. I've seen all of her notable films and was only impressed by ADLHA. Any great, obscure performance out there to recommend?

Another favorite of mine - Gena Rowlands - I find her nose job very disturbing also.

The thing with Ellen is she wasn't the average mom or sexy woman or even now a regal older woman. She is all of those things, but also a little goofy.

[quote]R109 The performance definetly isn't Oscar-worthy in Burstyn's hands, done well enough, but it's not really suppose to be about her anyway.

I think Burstyn is superb in the EXORCIST...very believable. She doesn't really come across as a famous movie star, but that's not as important an element in the story as just believing she's a terrified mother.

I like Dunaway's looks and career better than Burstyn's...but the latter is probably the better actress, with a wider range. Dunaway relies a lot on style, and her usually unvarying persona.

And god bless her for it!

Can you imagine if Louise Fletcher was in supporting Ann-Margaret would be an Oscar winner.

(shudder)