

Ellen Burstyn on addiction


Ellen Burstyn on discover


Ellen Burstyn on addicted

The interesting thing about doing a play is to find a way to make it fresh and do it as though you were doing it for the first time.

Ellen Burstyn on time

I talked to women who lived there, to get their speech patterns and outlook on life - and how narrow that is.

Ellen Burstyn on life

I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt.

Ellen Burstyn on business

It's a sin to have your films not to make money.

Ellen Burstyn on films

Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it.

Ellen Burstyn on children

Well my taste wasn't very good when I first started out.

But later, when I began to appreciate the art of acting, I would say the actress I most admire is Vanessa Redgrave.

Ellen Burstyn on acting

I wanted to work on this central problem of killing.

How you go about killing. Now, in the film I had to kill my children - well, I didn't want to get that far.

Ellen Burstyn on central

I couldn't kill a chicken, I couldn't kill a cow - I was a vegetarian too at that time - so I thought, well what is there that I could kill? I couldn't kill this and I couldn't kill that.

Ellen Burstyn on chicken

She loses 50 pounds in the film, and goes from fairly sane to totally out of her mind. So for the first part of the film I was wearing a 40 pound fat suit, which is very, very uncomfortable. But the worst part was the neck.

Ellen Burstyn on fairly

About Ellen Burstyn

Name Ellen Burstyn
Quotes 22 quotations
Nationality American
Profession Actress
Birthday December 7, 1932
About Ellen Burstyn is an American actress best known for her roles in films of the 1970s, such as The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for which she won an Academy Award.
Top topics film, kill, life, play, thinking

I did my famous cabbage soup diet, so I was able to do it.

Ellen Burstyn on cabbage

To me, it's a very moral film. If my son were a teenager now, I would drag him to see it.

Ellen Burstyn on drag


Ellen Burstyn on arc

Then in came this script with another very low offer, and another drug addict and a depressing and difficult part to play. I thought, 'Why should I put myself through that for hardly any money?'

Ellen Burstyn on addict

Nobody would want to leave that film to go get high.

Ellen Burstyn on film


Ellen Burstyn on literally

I sketched out a rough story for them and the director said, well it's a good story but we have the go-ahead from Universal to make this script and did I want to do it. I said no, and they left.

Ellen Burstyn on director


Ellen Burstyn on brooklyn

So I was at the Actor's Studio, thinking about this, and I happened to glance over to the other side of the stage and I saw the ugliest chair I have ever seen. And I thought, 'Well, I could kill that chair!'

Ellen Burstyn on actor


Ellen Burstyn on called