Ellen Burstyn Still Pursues the Job That Brings Her Happiness

You started working in the 1950s, and you are still appearing in films. How do you account for such a long career?

I just did a film in Australia with Taika Waititi — he’s a writer, director, actor, comedian and musician — which will be out later this year, I hope. When I was shooting this film, doing 12-hour days, my assistant said, “How are you doing this?” The answer came: I like my profession. My recipe for happiness in life is to find a way to make money at something I’d be glad to do for free.

The 1974 movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was a trailblazing film for women. Did you realize, when you were making it, how important it would be?

It’s what I hoped for. I wanted it to be a film about a woman who is like the women I knew, and myself, for that matter: working and raising a child by themselves, and aware of the change that was happening in the consciousness of the people. Women could say, “It’s my life; it’s not some man’s life that I’m helping him out with.” To me, that was the statement of the movie.

Burstyn starred in seminal films such as “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (pictured), “The Last Picture Show” and “The Exorcist.”

Alamy Stock Photo

What was it like to work with Martin Scorsese on that film?

It was so wonderful working with him. He does this thing, or he did at that time, which is, at the end of the day, he takes the scene that we are going to shoot the next day and rehearses it. Not for the camera, not setting up the shot, just the acting. And that’s when we, the actors, find out what’s hidden in those words we speak.

The Last Picture Show is such an iconic movie. You had a lot of chemistry on-screen with the actor Ben Johnson. What was he like?

He had that kind of quality of assurance, and control and silence. He was dignified. I felt respect for him.

Burstyn, seen here with Max von Sydow in “The Exorcist,” has won an Academy Award, a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards.

Alamy Stock Photo

The Exorcist, which came out in 1973, was the first horror film nominated for an Oscar for best picture. Did you know it would be groundbreaking?

It was a best-selling book when it was made into a film. I had high hopes for it, but I remember the day it opened: I was in Los Angeles and it opened worldwide, and I was in the kitchen, and there were shots of people [on television] standing in line in Canada in a snowstorm for four hours, waiting for the movie to open. I remember the first time I saw it with an audience, Billy [director William Friedkin] and I were sitting together, and the first scary moment is when I, with a candle, go up into an attic, and there’s this scary sound. And the audience laughed. I later read that when people get scared, they often laugh to resettle, to come back to themselves. And that’s what happened. From that point on, the audience became like a unit, like they were in this together. It was quite an experience for me.

You worked with Jack Nicholson early in his career, in The King of Marvin Gardens. What was he like?

First of all, he’s a brilliant guy. I loved working with him. Just loved it. He has a level of reality about him when he is acting that is beyond anybody. About a year ago I worked with someone who was close to him, and this person told me that when she told him she was working with me, he said, “Now, there’s a broad.” I thought, Thank you. That’s a good compliment.

How has the world changed since you began working in the late 1950s?

Women have their own lives now, their own abilities and their own way to fulfill their lives. We’re separated from the patriarchy a bit, enough for us to be heads of corporations or pilots or to go to the moon. It wasn’t like that in the 1950s. When I started, a woman was a wife or a mother. And occasionally a businesswoman. There weren’t many women directors or women producers. There weren’t women on the set except actresses. Men owned the world. That’s changed.

You have played scary roles, but you have also laughed a lot on-screen. Do you laugh a lot in real life?

Oh, yes. Laughter does something physically, as well as spiritually and emotionally and intellectually, for you. I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have laughter in my life.