Ellen Burstyn
☼ Born on 7 December 1932, in Detroit, Michigan, USA
Biography
Ellen Burstyn was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Correine Marie (Hamel) and John Austin Gillooly. She is of Irish, French/French-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch (German), and Native American ancestry. She worked a number of jobs before she became an actress. At 14, she was a short-order cook at a lunch counter. After graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High School, she went to Texas to model and then to New York as a showgirl on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952). From there, it was to Montreal as a nightclub dancer and then Broadway with her debut in "Fair Game (1957)". By 1963, she appeared on the TV series The Doctors (1963), but she gained notice for her role in Goodbye Charlie (1964). Ellen then took time off to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
Her big break came when she was cast as the female lead in The Last Picture Show (1971). For this role, she received nominations for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. Next, she co-starred with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), giving a chilling performance. Then came The Exorcist (1973). She was again nominated for the Golden Globe and Academy Award. In 1974, she starred in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), for which performance she won the Oscar and BAFTA awards as Best Actress. For the Golden Globe, she was nominated but lost to Marsha Mason. The same year, she made history by winning a Tony Award for the Broadway play "Same Time, Next Year". She won praise and award nominations for her
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performances in the film versions of Same Time, Next Year (1978) and Resurrection (1980).
In "Resurrection", she played a woman with the power to heal. A succession of TV movies resulting in two Emmy nominations kept her going as did the series The Ellen Burstyn Show (1986). The TV movies continued through the 1990s. Also in the 1990s, she was cast in the supporting role in such movies as The Cemetery Club (1993), How to Make an American Quilt (1995), The Baby-Sitters Club (1995) and The Spitfire Grill (1996). In addition to her acting, She was the first woman president of Actor's Equity (1982-85).
In the role of actor
The Exorcist: Believer (05/10/2023)
Two 13-year-old girls return possessed after going missing in the woods in The Exorcist: Believer. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is the single father to 13-year-old Angela (Lidya Jewett), whose birth cost her mother’s life. Angela goes after school to hang out with her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum), however, they disappear in the woods and […]
The Age of Shadows (20/09/2016)
A police officer in Japan-occupied Korea secretly begins to work with the resistance movement he is supposed to bring down in The Age of Shadows. Lee Jung-chool (Song Kang ho) is a Korean captain for the Japanese Police in 1920s occupied Korea. Lee and his partner Hashimoto (Um Tae-Goo) are tasked with bringing down the resistance movement […]
Interstellar (05/11/2014)
From Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception) comes the science fiction epic Interstellar. At an unspecified point in the future, global warming has affected the Earth to the point where dust storms are a regular occurrence and the focus of humanity has moved from technology to agriculture, in order to maintain the shrinking food […]
Love, Marilyn (06/04/2013)
More than fifty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most infamous of Hollywood tragedies. Even though she had a very high ambition to succeed as an actress, she fell victim to typecasting and substance abuse. There have been countless biographies about Marilyn over the years, with the most recent example being […]
The Ambassador (12/01/2013)
This is one of those “I can’t believe he did that” types of documentaries. In The Ambassador, Danish journalist Mads Brügger goes undercover as a Liberian diplomat in order to infiltrate the blood diamond trade in the Central African Republic. It is a very dangerous act of deception and Brügger is warned that if he […]