Top 25 Ellen Burstyn Quotes

With ‘The Last Picture Show,’ Peter Bogdanovich brought the script to the company that made it. They liked it, and they gave him the money he needed to make the film. He cast it with the actors that he thought were right for the parts. Now, it’s the reverse.

I’ve always wanted to work with my friend Al Pacino.

Today, people like Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep have vowed to improve the opportunities for women, but those promises are still unusual.

There was no such thing as child abuse. Parents owned their children. They could do whatever they wanted.

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.

All of my life I have asked the question, ‘Who would I be if I had grown up in a loving home?’ And I have no way to answer it. I don’t know if I would be placid and satisfied with whatever is around me – a happy, jolly, sedentary person.

I’m always learning and trying new things. When you stop learning, you start dying.

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.

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.

I feel compassion is so important to develop in ourselves. It’s one of the most important elements of being a human being.

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.

I was doing the work I was capable of doing with my own native talent, but when I looked at actors like Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Kim Stanley, and Geraldine Page, I knew that they knew something that I didn’t know. I wanted to find out what that was.

The only Shakespeare I ever did was a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ two years in a row in my garden in Rockland County on the Hudson River in the 1980s. I had all the actors from the Actors Studio come out, and we made our own costumes.

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.

When I was 19, I took a train from Houston to New York, and I had in my lap the collected works of William Shakespeare. The play I read on that journey was ‘Titus Andronicus.’

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.

I’ve never done anything in my career that has gotten as much attention as ‘House of Cards.’

My mother was very glamorous. She was very beautiful, and she had a lot of friends; she was fun and loved to drink.

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!

With all the awards I’ve won, you’d think that I’d at least be able to make a living. It’s a really terrible situation.

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

It’s interesting: John Calley at Warner Bros. helped me put ‘Alice’ together. It was very unusual back then for a studio to support an actress the way he backed and supported me. He even asked me if I wanted to direct the film, which I didn’t feel prepared to at that point.

We can all live longer, better, than we ever could before. You don’t have to retire.

Directors tend to kind of let me do what I want to do.

I eat healthily and exercise, and I’m not giving up and saying I’m too old – I’m just determined to keep on marching with enthusiasm and interest and curiosity.