- Born
- Birth nameEdna Rae Gillooly
- Height5′ 6″ (1.68 m)
- 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 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).- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana
- SpousesNeil Burstyn(November 12, 1964 - April 1972) (divorced)Paul Roberts(September 14, 1958 - April 23, 1962) (divorced, 1 child)William Alexander(December 1951 - September 1957) (divorced)
- ParentsCorreine Marie HamelJohn Austin Gillooly
- Her smile
- Her soft, frail voice
- Suffered a permanent spinal injury while filming The Exorcist (1973). In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain, which was kept in the final version of the released film.
- Turned down the lead role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) because she had a sick husband to care for.
- Worked as an acrobat and as a model for paperback covers.
- Her third (and last) husband, Neil Burstyn was a bright, talented upcoming actor and writer (The Monkees (1965)). According to Ellen, he eventually degenerated into mental illness and became schizophrenic and violent. He left her just before she became a star. When she refused his pleas to get back together, he stalked and terrorized her for many years. He committed suicide in 1978.
- In September 2009, she became the 20th person to have won the Triple Crown of Acting: Academy Award (1975: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)); Tony Award (1975: Same Time Next Year), and Emmy Award (2009: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)).
- Acting feels like a congenital condition to me - it's in my genes.
- It's unfortunate but our society is such that, for women in Hollywood, you get to a certain age and just fall off a cliff. But in my case, I refuse to die. I will hang on, by a little finger if necessary.
- The main way you grow is in deepening compassion. Somehow when you go through painful experiences you're more sympathetic to other people's experiences. After you've been working for awhile and discover how much material you have to call on, you end up saying, 'Oh, thank god I had an unhappy childhood!' I suppose there are some actors somewhere who have had a happy childhood. I just haven't met them yet.
- [on preparing to undertake a complex role] You have hold of a string that you're following, and you're following where this question leads to that question, and it keeps on going until you come to some specific understanding of this human being - as opposed to every other human being in the world.
- I'm a deep-water swimmer. Everything on the surface is usually a mask. I always know what's behind the mask.
- Thursday's Game (1974) - $10,000
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