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Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn laid out her reservations about method acting during a masterclass at the Venice Film Festival. The actress, who is in Italy as the recipient of the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime
Achievement and the star of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “Flesh Impact” and Kornél Mundruczó’s “A Place to Be,” noted how what actors currently call “method” vastly differs from the original concept developed by her mentor Lee Strasberg.
Recalling the teachings of the lauded American acting coach and actor, Burstyn said Strasberg taught method as a way of “training the senses to respond to imaginary circumstances.” “When you train with him, you really learn acting is using all your senses,” she added. “It’s when you create the sensory aspect of a scene, where the sunlight is coming through the window, and the smell of the room and all of your senses that you have memorized have an effect on you, and it brings you alive in that memory so that it becomes real to you.”
“This is very different than a lot of people that I’m reading about in the newspapers lately who claim to be method actors, who don’t know anything about it and just make a lot of noise,” she emphasized.
Recalling her previous experiences with method actors, Burstyn said she had a co-star ask her once if he should get drunk before shooting a drunken scene, to which she replied: “Absolutely not.” “Well, he didn’t listen to me, and he got drunk, and he tore up the set. They had to call the police on him. That’s not method acting; that’s not any kind of acting. That’s just misguided.”
Playing Marilyn Monroe in Gyllenhaal’s “Flesh Impact,” which imagines a reality where the star lived into her old age, led Burstyn to look back at her encounter with the actress. The two crossed paths only once, at a comedy club. “Once I saw her, I couldn’t stop looking at her,” said the “Flowers in the Attic” performer. “At one point she looked at me, and she smiled and nodded at me like she recognized me. I was early in my career, and I was so thrilled to be recognized by Marilyn Monroe.”
As for “A Place to Be,” Burstyn called the film “a sexless love story.” The renowned actress stars alongside multihyphenate Taika Waititi in a road movie about the unlikely friendship between an elderly woman and a middle-aged man travelling from Chicago to New York to return a lost racing pigeon to its owner.
Burstyn called Waititi “a great actor,” noting that “working with him is like being in life, not in a movie.” “We were alive with each other […] It was full of love without being a sexual relationship.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Burstyn looked at some of her most successful roles, including Chris MacNeil in William Friedkin’s horror classic “The Exorcist.” The actress recalled the eerie deaths and accidents that happened during the shoot of the film, including a fire that ravaged a great part of the set and one of the crew members who lost their newborn child. For the 45th anniversary of the film, Friedkin and Burstyn reunited to talk about their experience, with the director dismissing the eerie events as “made up.” “For some reason, he didn’t want to support that story,” she said. “So I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say he’s lying. But the fact of the matter is that it was a scary set. I can’t say I know why.”
Burstyn also briefly brought up feminist icon Gloria Steinem, who died last week, when speaking about her titular role in Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” “We made Alice just the way I wanted Alice to be made,” she said. “I think it did contribute to the change in consciousness that Gloria Steinem had initiated, and as I traveled in the world, a lot of women have told me that Alice really did change the consciousness in their country, and that pleases me deeply.”
“You also received an Academy Award [for the role],” interjected the moderator. “Oh yes, that!” exclaimed the good humored actress.
