Ellen Burstyn - Biography

Last Editor: kragle				Ellen Burstyn Biography -   Name : Ellen Burstyn Birth name : Edna Rae Gillooly Born : December 7, 1932 (1932-12-07) (age 74) Detroit, Michigan, USA Occupation(s) : Actress Spouse(s) : William Alexander (1950–1957) Paul Roberts (1958–1962) Neil Burstyn (1964–1972) Years active : 1958–present

Ellen Burstyn Trivia -

Received a permanent spinal injury while filming The Exorcist (1973). In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain, which was filmed for the movie. She wrote to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences to protest Liv Ullmann's elimination from Oscar contention in 1974 for her performance in Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973) (aka "Scenes from a Marriage"). AMPAS used a rule under which TV presentations must have appeared in movie theaters in the same year, to prevent Ullmann from being nominated. The result is that Burstyn won the Oscar for her performance in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). Burstyn was not able to attend the 1975 Academy Awards Ceremony, thus couldn't accept her Best Actress Oscar for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). Martin Scorsese, the film's director, accepted her Oscar on her behalf. Has one grandchild. Chosen by People Magazine as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World." [May 2001] Born at 4:00 AM EST. Wore 20- and 40-pound fat suits and prosthetic necks to play Sara Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream (2000). Said in the book "On Women Turning 50" that she did not attend the 1975 Academy Awards, where she won the Best Actress award for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), because she was certain she would win and could not handle the pressure and attention. After attending several later Oscar ceremonies at which she lost, she regretted not being there to accept her award. Along with Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel, was named co-president of The Actor's Studio in 2000. Doesn't drink alcohol or coffee and practices Yoga. Was first female president of The Actor's Equity (1982-1985). Served as co-artistic director for The Actor's Studio. Turned down the lead role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) because she had an ill husband to take care of. Says she is often mistaken for fellow actress Louise Fletcher. People tell her she was great in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) (for which Fletcher won an Oscar). Fletcher reports being told frequently that she did a wonderful job in one of Burstyn's roles. Received the National Board of Review's Career Achievement Award in December 2000 at Tavern on the Green. Has one adopted son, Jefferson, and a granddaughter, Emily. Practices the mystical Islamic religion Sufism. Is an ordained minister. Is a Vegetarian. Played her Academy Award nominated character from Same Time, Next Year (1978) on Broadway first and won a Tony Award as Best Actress (Dramatic) for the role in 1975. Member of jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981 Co-head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival 1988 Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1977 Is Irish American. The character of Jean Harris seems to be a favorite for Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn was Emmy-nominated for the lead role as Jean Harris in the 1981 TV-movie, The People vs. Jean Harris (1981) (TV) and, in 2006, she was nominated as a supporting character (as an ex-lover of Jean Harris's lover) in the cable-movie based on the Harris case in Mrs. Harris (2005) (TV). Burstyn is perhaps the first actress to be nominated in a performance that is less than 1-minute long. She is vying for the Emmy with fellow co-star and Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman. Her Emmy-nominated performance in Mrs. Harris (2005) (TV) lasts approximately 15 seconds Made a special Academy Awards appearance in 1998, at the The 70th Annual Academy Awards (1998) (TV), and participated in the Oscar Winners Tribute sequence along with other Academy Award winners. Was listed as a potential nominee on the 2007 Razzie Award nominating ballot. She was suggested in the Worst Supporting Actress category for her performance in the film The Wicker Man (2006), however, she failed to receive a nomination. Worked as an acrobat and as a model for paperback covers. Godmother of her The Spitfire Grill (1996) co-star, Marcia Gay Harden,'s children. Her third (and last) husband, Neil Burstyn was a bright, talented upcoming actor and writer ("The Monkees" (1966)). According to Ellen, he eventually degenerated into mental illness and became schizophrenic and violent. He left her just before she became a star. When she refused his pleas to get back together, he stalked and terrorized her for many years. He committed suicide in 1978. In 2005, she was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Acting of the Savannah Film Festival. Recipient of the 2006 Career Achievement in Acting Award from the Hamptons Film Festival.

Ellen Burstyn Detailed Biography -

Ellen Burstyn (born December 7, 1932, as Edna Rae Gillooly in Detroit, Michigan, USA) is an Academy Award-winning American actress. She debuted on Broadway in 1957 and, in 1975, won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in "Same Time, Next Year." In 1990 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Until 1970, she was credited as "Ellen McRae" in nearly all her film and TV appearances. Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1974 for her performance in the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. She received her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1971 for the film The Last Picture Show, and was subsequently nominated for Best Actress in 1973 for the horror movie The Exorcist, in 1978 for Same Time, Next Year, in 1980 for Resurrection, and for Requiem for a Dream in 2000. She appeared in many television shows of the 1960s, including guest appearances on Perry Mason, Maverick, Wagon Train, 77 Sunset Strip, The Big Valley and Gunsmoke. She hosted Saturday Night Live in 1980. In 1986, she had her own sitcom, The Ellen Burstyn Show with Megan Mullally as her daughter and Elaine Stritch as her mother. It was cancelled after one season. From 2000 to 2002, Burstyn appeared in the CBS television drama That's Life. In 2006, she starred as a bishop in the controversial NBC comedy-drama The Book of Daniel. Burstyn last appeared in The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky, with whom she worked in Requiem for a Dream. Burstyn was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Miniseries or Special, for the TV movie The People vs. Jean Harris (1981) and again for another TV movie, Pack of Lies (1987). In 2006, she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special for HBO's Mrs Harris as Dr. Tarnower's "Ex-Lover #3." (She had played the title character in The People vs Mrs Jean Harris.) She was nominated for a performance that consisted of 14 seconds of screen time, two lines of dialogue and a total of 38 words. This is the shortest nominated performance in the history of the Emmy Awards. Soon after the nominations were announced, an outcry ensued from the press and the public regarding the worthiness of the nomination. One explanation was that people were honoring Burstyn for her nominated but non-winning performance from the first Harris telefilm. A more popular accusation was that the nominating committee was either confused in their recollection, or merely "threw in" her name from sheer recognition and assumption of a worthy performance without actually having viewed it. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences initially insisted that "based on the popular vote, this is a legitimate nomination." Meanwhile, HBO deflected the blame for submitting the nomination to the movie production company. Burstyn's own reaction ranged from initial silence to: I thought it was fabulous. My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and ultimately I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear. to this final quote: This doesn't have anything to do with me. I don't even want to know about this. You people work it out yourself. Ultimately, Kelly Macdonald, who starred in The Girl in the Cafe, won the award. Neither Burstyn or her costar Cloris Leachman won. In March 2007, the Academy officially announced that eligibility for a Primetime Emmy Award in any of the long-form supporting-actor categories required nominees to appear on-screen in at least 10 percent of the project (9 minutes in a typical 90-minute telefilm). Many continue to cite this incident to illustrate the lack of integrity in the increasingly expansive process of Emmy Award nominations, where name and role misrecognition have played an increasingly visible role.