Ellen Burstyn Quotes

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.

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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

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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'

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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The world is killing itself at the moment, due to religious differences. So it's on everyone's mind and it's a good time to explore different people's attitudes toward religion.

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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.

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I regret turning down the lead role in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, ... Who is this Martin Scorsese person Why should I see his little film about 'Mean Streets'

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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'

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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

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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.

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