Ellen Burstyn Quotations

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.

She goes from one addiction to another. All are ways for her to not feel her feelings.

It's about avoiding reality through various escape routes that become addictions and lead to Hell. My character is addicted to television, chocolate, coffee, to her dream of her son, which has no basis in reality.

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.

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!'

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

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

I always wanted to play Joan of Arc. I've always wanted to do that. Now I'm thinking, 'Maybe there's a story in Joan of Arc's mother!' If I don't hurry up, her grandmother!

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.

They pulled Resurrection out of the theatres, so it was running in New York and I was nominated for the Oscar and there was no ad in the newspapers to say it was running. So it was literally killed.

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

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

It's been awhile. My Oscar is getting kind of tarnished. I looked at it a couple of years ago and thought I really needed a new one.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've lived most of my life in Manhattan, but as close as Brooklyn is to Manhattan, there are people who live there who have been to Manhattan maybe once or twice.

When you've been an actress for 45 years as I have, it's a feast or famine life and I thought that maybe it was time now to have a steady gig!

What a lovely surprise to discover how un-lonely being alone can be

I think that the change began... I made a film a few years ago called The Spitfire Grill, and that didn't make much money either, but it was a good film and an independent film.

just incredible. I look forward to seeing his career unfold.

We are thrilled that 'Inside the Actors Studio' will have a 12th season on Bravo,

But I was always uncomfortable in that. Physically uncomfortable. Either from the fat suit, or the neck, or my severe dieting. Or wearing the camera.

It was about this school teacher who went to Jerusalem and started bleeding from the palms. It just didn't make an awful lot of sense to me.

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?'

Bob Duvall is a great actor because each time out, he creates a whole, complete character. You have the feeling that you're not seeing an actor at all, but a fully realized human being. Think of how he was in The Godfather. If you didn't know Bobby, you'd think that he really was Tom, the consigliere. Then you see him in Santini, and he's completely different. He's not only a personality, he's a consummate actor.

Everything gets old if you do it often enough.

Regret is a toxin that I try not to allow in my body.

When you recognize what your talents are, a happy life is developing them to the greatest extent you can.

I don't think the show could have found a better or more beautiful home,