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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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Getting
Kind
Years
Related 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Now
Money
Picture
" Directors tend to kind of let me do what I want to do. "
Ellen Burstyn
Kind
Tend
Me
" Nobody would want to leave that film to go get high. "
Ellen Burstyn
Film
Want
High
" I'm always learning and trying new things. When you stop learning, you start dying. "
Ellen Burstyn
New Things
Trying
You
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Children
You
Work
" I feel compassion is so important to develop in ourselves. It's one of the most important elements of being a human being. "
Ellen Burstyn
Human
Feel
Important
" 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!' "
Ellen Burstyn
Chair
Actor
Stage
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Chicken
Vegetarian
Time
" There's no doubt that the patriarchy that we live in also controls the movie industry. The heads of the studios are men, and it's reflected in the scripts they buy and the work that gets made. "
Ellen Burstyn
Live
Men
Work
" 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! "
Ellen Burstyn
Play
Mother
Always
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Son
Character
Reality
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Dream
Night
Two
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Exercise
Curiosity
Giving
" I feel eager to learn as much as I can, not only about my craft but the world and the cosmos and how we got here and whether there's any purpose to our being here. "
Ellen Burstyn
World
Purpose
Learn
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Said
Want
Left
" Today, people like Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep have vowed to improve the opportunities for women, but those promises are still unusual. "
Ellen Burstyn
Opportunities
Women
People
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Find
Work
Talent
" I'm interested in the cosmos. I want to know what's out there and how connected we are. "
Ellen Burstyn
How
Know
Out
" I've liked all the directors I've worked with a lot. And the ones I like best are the ones that have really good taste about what take was best. "
Ellen Burstyn
Good Taste
Like
Good
" What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. "
Ellen Burstyn
Surprise
Alone
Lovely
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Good
Art
Well
" I've always wanted to work with my friend Al Pacino. "
Ellen Burstyn
Friend
My Friend
Wanted
" It's a sin to have your films not to make money. "
Ellen Burstyn
Money
Your
Make
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Me
My Life
Happy
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Hurt
Work
Think
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Brooklyn
People
Life
" 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. "
Ellen Burstyn
Interesting
Feel
Me
" The real work of an actor goes on inside, and I don't think it changes from director to director - I always go for broke! But I don't get a lot of direction, unfortunately. "
Ellen Burstyn
Direction
Think
Changes
" I left my career in Hollywood, moved back to New York, and went to Lee Strasberg and studied with him for the rest of his life. "
Ellen Burstyn
Back
Rest
New York
" 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.' "
Ellen Burstyn
Journey
Train
Play