Ellen Burstyn

Perhaps his golden age in the cinema was during the 70s, when he worked on films that became classics and won the only Oscar of his career. However, Ellen Burstyn is an actress with a long history and constant work, so her success cannot be limited to a few specific years. She has appeared in the theater, on television and in the movies, and in every job, no matter how small she has been, she has left the mark of her talent. Her roles are usually those of suffering women capable of enduring carts and carts with unparalleled strength.

Her real name is Edna Rae Gilhooley and she was born on December 7, 1932, in Detroit (Michigan). Her family was of Irish descent, so Ellen was born Catholic. However, she ended up practicing an eclectic spirituality, close to Sufism. In this regard, she says of herself: “I am a spirit open to the truth that lives in all religions.” Her parents divorced her when she was little, and she suffered a harsh upbringing with a violent and controlling mother. Her life was so unpleasant then that the day she turned 18 she decided to drop out of high school without finishing and leave home. At the age of twenty-five, she made her Broadway theater debut and continued her career on the stage for many years. In the sixties she participated, under the name of Edna Rae,Perry Mason and Caravan (series) . In 1967, already with extensive television experience, she joined Lee Strasberg ‘s Actor’s Studioand was paired with Donald Sutherland in The Fabulous World of Alex , a comedy by Paul Mazursky .

In 1971 his work on The Last Picture , directed by Peter Bogdanovich , earned the Burstyn his first Oscar nomination. It was the beginning of a sweet moment in her life. Her face became known to the world two years later when she played Regan’s distraught mother, the possessed girl from The Exorcist . Impossible to forget her face, horrified with pain at what she was experiencing. The actress was nominated for an Oscar again, this time for best actress, but she did not win the statuette either ( Glenda Jackson won ). But the third time is the charm. In 1973, director Martin Scorsese was responsible for the wonderful Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a ‘road movie’ that portrayed the hard life of Alice Hyatt, a woman who went from one place to another with her daughter in search of a safe place to live. The leading role of Ellen Burstyn this time did deserve the Oscar. She then returned to work with Mazursky on the acclaimed Harry and Fool and joined the cast of the weirdo Providence , directed by Alan Resnais. In 1977 she earned her fourth Oscar nomination for the role of Doris in Same Time Next Year . The actress had already played that same role in its theatrical version, and in fact had been awarded the Tony Award for him in 1975. And speaking of successes, add up and go on, because in her next film, a fantastic drama directed by Daniel Petrie titledResurrection (1980) , Ellen was nominated again in the best actress category.

But, despite her professional success, they were not good years in the life of the actress. In the private plane she was living tragic moments. She was then going through her third marriage, after seven years married (1950-1957) to Bill Alexander and marrying and divorcing in 1962 with a man with whom she adopted her only son, Jefferson. But her third marriage was especially hard. Her husband, Neil Nephew, whom she married in 1964, suffered from severe schizophrenia and Ellen often received violent attacks from her. After her divorce in 1972, he did not stop harassing her for years and she herself said that he once even broke into her house and raped her. Finally, the story also ended in tragedy when Neil committed suicide in 1978.

In the 1980s his leading roles began to decline, although he still worked in interesting films, such as the adventure drama Northern Silence (1981), the war film Ambassador to the Middle East (1984) or the romantic drama Twice in a Lifetime . (1985). Since then, the great Ellen has participated in about thirty films between cinema and television, but almost always as a supporting actress, sometimes with minor roles. In fact, what happened with the TV movie Mrs. Harris was very notorious.(2006), for which the actress received an Emmy nomination. The fact is that there was severe criticism of the jury because the actress’s work in the film lasted only 14 seconds and consisted of only 38 words of dialogue. On that occasion she did not win the award, which she did get in 2009 thanks to her supporting role in the series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit .

Other films in which the Detroit actress has excelled in recent decades included the romantic drama When a Man Loves a Woman (1995), the stupendous melodrama The Story of the Spitfire Grill (1998), the nostalgic southern tale Ya-ya Clan (2002) and, of course, Darren Aronofsky ‘s terrifying but remarkable Requiem for a Dream (2001), for her role as pathological addict Ellen received her sixth Oscar nomination.