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Ellen Burstyn is an American actress acclaimed for her work in film, television, and theater. Her performances in films like "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and "The Exorcist" earned her critical acclaim and Academy Awards. Burstyn's career has been marked by her ability to tackle diverse roles with depth and nuance, making her a respected and accomplished actress.
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"It's a sin to have your films not to make money."

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"Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it."

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

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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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"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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"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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"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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"I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt."

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

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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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"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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"She goes from one addiction to another. All are ways for her to not feel her feelings."

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

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

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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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