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Maggie Gyllenhaal delivered a message on behalf of Ellen Burstyn before the 93-year-old acting legend took the stage at the Venice Film Festival to receive the prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
“Ellen
asked me to let you know that she recently took a fall,” Gyllenhaal said from the podium. “She’s OK, but she is moving more slowly — which is fine because it’ll give us more time to clap.”
Indeed, the room burst into applause as Burstyn, clad in a vibrant yellow gown, sauntered onto the stage with a walker. Burstyn cried and wiped away her tears with a tissue as she was greeted with a heartfelt, minutes-long standing ovation.
“You’re making me cry!” she said, which did little to stop the enthusiastic applause. “You’re overwhelming me, you know! I don’t know how to recover from that generous greeting.”
Burstyn has achieved a lot in her seven-decade career in Hollywood, which she was quick to remind the crowd, but she puts the Venice award among the top honors.
“You can’t imagine how meaningful this is to me It’s one thing to win an Oscar, a Tony or an Emmy — all of which I’ve won,” she said. “But this … it’s a lot.”
Since she learned she’d receive the Golden Lion, she said, she’s been reflecting on her life — and what it means to get a career tribute.
“At 93, it means you have a far about of lifetime to look back on,” she said. “I thought, maybe it’s not just a record of what you’ve accomplished, but what you’ve learned.”
During her speech, she recalled that while shooting Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” she was required to film a nighttime driving scene while the director and the cinematographer were blocking her view of the street.
“I couldn’t see the side of the road; I could go off and kill all of us,” Burstyn said. “But then I noticed, this is a two-way road. There’s a white line in the middle of the road, and I can see that. So all I have to do is look up to the left, and follow the white line. And that’s how I managed to not kill Martin Scorsese.”
She then drew a parallel between the funny story and the fraught state of the U.S. right now, saying: “I wanted to close out saying how deeply appreciative I am of this Golden Lion and I hope — no, pray — that my own country will find its own white line.”
Burstyn was awarded the Golden Lion on Monday afternoon during the premiere of Gyllenhaal’s short film “Flesh Impact.” Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson and Murray Bartlett, her co-stars in “Place to Be,” a comedic drama that premieres Wednesday on the Lido, attended the ceremony. The trio were among the first to lead another standing ovation when Burstyn exited the stage and went to sit in the audience.
Dedicated to Marilyn Monroe on what would be her 100th birthday, the 20-minute-long “Flesh Impact” portrays Dakota Johnson as the actress at the height of her fame and Burstyn as the version of Monroe the world never got to see. The star died on Aug. 4, 1962 at age 36 from an acute barbiturate overdose. The short’s title, “Flesh Impact,” comes from a phrase once used to describe the aura of Monroe — “that she looked so real and luminous on camera that viewers felt they could touch her through the screen,” according to the synopsis.
Prior to the ceremony, Burstyn sat on Monday morning for a press conference and spoke about a fleeting encounter with Monroe way back when.
“We never met. We saw each other once. We went to a nightclub, and she was sitting across from me,” Burstyn recalled. “And of course, I was enchanted by just looking at her. She was such a magical creature. And then she looked at me and nodded at me. And I was very early in my career, and I thought, was I just recognized by Marilyn Monroe?”
She had another connection to Monroe, through Ralph Roberts, an actor-turned-masseur to the stars.
“Ralph Roberts, who had been Marilyn’s masseur, and not only that, but her confidant, he had lots of stories to tell me about Marilyn,” Burstyn said. “So I used to get my massages and hear Marilyn’s stories. My favorite one was that her whole persona was a construction.”
Burstyn was asked if she had any other memorable encounters with other Hollywood luminaries, to which she responded, “When I met Marlon Brando briefly, and I almost fainted. That was pretty spectacular.”
Then, she cracked, “I can’t think of anyone else — it mustn’t have impressed me too much.”
She also recalled the early career advice she received from Bette Davis, who was 24 years her senior.
“I had just become known,” Burstyn said. “I was new, but famous. I met [Davis] and she said, ‘Let me tell you one thing, honey. At the beginning of your illustrious career, the only thing that’s important is your work. Anybody that tries to get in the way of you and your work, they’re your enemy. You know what you say to them? ‘You are my enemy.’ I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Davis…”
Burstyn has two movies at Venice, the other being Kornél Mundruczó’s quirky drama “Place to Be,” which premieres on Wednesday. She stars in “Place to Be” alongside Waititi, Anderson, Édgar Ramírez, Lena Waithe and Bartlett. Mundruczó and Burstyn previously collaborated on “Pieces of a Woman,” which premiered on the Lido in 2020.
Burstyn, who is still acting as a nonagenarian, described her rationale for saying “yes” to projects.
“When I get a script, I sit down and read it — and if it makes me laugh, that’s good. If it makes me cry, that’s good. If it makes me laugh and cry, that’s terrific,” she said. “By the time I finish the script, I have to feel moved in some way to say, ‘I want to do this.'”
As Burstyn mentioned in her Golden Lion Speech, she is one of the few performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, earning an Oscar for “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and a Tony for “Same Time, Next Year” in 1975, and two Emmys for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Political Animals” in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Over her 60-year career in Hollywood, Burstyn has received dozens of nominations for films and television shows including “The Exorcist,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Requiem for a Dream” and “House of Cards.”
Burstyn believes roles for women in entertainment have changed “enormously” over the decades. She added that although the industry is “not quite 50-50” in terms of parity, “they’re close.”
“When I first started working, which was 150 years ago, there were no women on set. No women crew. No women directing. It was all men,” she said. “If a woman was on set, it meant she was an actress. And then slowly, thanks to blessed Gloria Steinem, who just died, the consciousness started to be changed.”
