Ellen Burstyn Biography

MARITAL STATUS
Profession Actress
Birth name Edna Rae Gilhooley
Pseudo Ellen McRae
American nationality
Birth December 7, 1932 (Detroit, Michigan, United States)

BIOGRAPHY
Ellen Burstyn had a troubled youth. At 14, she was a cook in a snack bar, but also a dancer in an acrobat troupe. After dropping out of high school, she became a model in Texas to pose on the covers of paperback books. Then we find her in a nightclub in Montreal where she is a dancer. She then went to New York where she appeared as a girl in a television show. It was during this period that she began to become interested in acting. She then made her debut on Broadway in 1957 with the play Fair Game , then played several small roles in television series until the early 1960s.

She made her cinema debut in 1964 under the leadership of Vincente Minnelli with Goodbye Charlie . In order to further master her acting technique, she then worked with Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio while continuing her recurring appearances in the TV series The Doctors until the end of the 1960s. Success was not long in coming. come with The Last Session (1971) by Peter Bogdanovich where his performance earned him an Oscar nomination. Subsequently, she played opposite Jack Nicholson in the bittersweet The King of Marvin Gardens by Bob Rafelson , and played in The Exorcist by William Friedkin , a cult horror film which earned her a second nomination. She imposes herself but she is somewhat confined to the roles of a simple or unhinged woman.

It was with the drama Alice is No Longer Here (1974) by Martin Scorsese that she obtained real recognition, since she finally won the Oscar for best actress. Despite this, she was not overwhelmed by offers and remained away from the screens for three years before reappearing brilliantly in Providence by Alain Resnais . This film marks the beginning of a series of public failures which will see her return to television for a time where she achieves some success. She even hosted a TV series in 1986 called The Ellen Burstyn Show .

It was only in the 90s that she returned to cinema in a less sporadic manner, through supporting roles in comedies or dramas that went mostly unnoticed. Her real return came in 2000 with The Yards where she played the role of Mark Wahlberg ‘s mother , and especially with Requiem for a dreamwhere her role as an aging woman addicted to diet pills recalls her great talent and earns her a new Oscar nomination.

Between 2002 and 2006, the films in which the actress appeared were not very successful with the public. This is the case of A Mysterious Painting by Brent Shields or The Wicker Man by Neil LaBute . But 2006 was the year of a new major collaboration between Ellen Burstyn and Darren Aronofsky with the film The Fountain where she played a great scientist. In 2008, she appeared alongside Thandie Newton and Josh Brolin in the biopic W. – The Unlikely President by Oliver Stone . The actress, for the duration of a role, takes the place of Barbara Bush. The same year, Ellen Burstyn also appeared on the small screen. She is part of the cast of season 10 of New York Special Unit for an episode which earned her an Emmy Award. She plays the role of the mother of Inspector Elliot Stabler, played by Christopher Meloni . A character that she will find more than ten years later in the spin-off dedicated to Stabler, New York: Organized Crime.

Unstoppable, she starred in the miniseries Political Animals and in 2014, appeared in around ten projects for television ( Louie ) or cinema: The Way of the Enemy , Draft Day or Interstellar , in which she played the character of Jessica Chastain older. After an appearance in season 4 of House of Cards , she played in the TV movie The Past Recomposed with Laura Dern , then played in quick succession the mother of astronaut Natalie Portman in Lucy in the Sky (2019) then that of Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman (2020). The same year, she starred opposite Ann-Margret , James Caan , Jane Curtin and Loretta Devine for the comedy Queen Bees , which remained unpublished in France.

She is then in the credits of the mini-series The First Lady , dedicated to the three First Ladies Michelle Obama, Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Ford. Ellen Burstyn plays President Roosevelt’s mother. In 2023, she agrees to reprise the role of Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist – Devotion, fifty years after William Friedkin’s classic.