Summary
- Ellen Burstyn’s performance in The Exorcist redefined horror, portraying a desperate mother fighting to save her possessed child.
- Big Love showcased Burstyn’s talent with her unforgettable portrayal of Barb’s estranged mother in just six episodes.
- Burstyn shines in Pieces of a Woman, delivering a moving performance as a Holocaust survivor supporting her grieving daughter.
Ellen Burstyn is one of the world’s most revered and iconic actors, and from The Exorcist to House of Cards to Pieces of a Woman, she’s been a part of some truly great movies and TV shows over the years. There are very few actors who are as prolific and whose careers have as much breadth as Burstyn. She’s been acting on the small screen since the 1950s and on the big screen since the 1960s, playing a wide range of different characters.
With an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and two Emmys under her belt, Burstyn is one of the few performers to receive the prestigious “Triple Crown of Acting.” She elevated the horror genre from B-movie fare to A-movie prestige with her powerful turn as a desperate mother running out of options in The Exorcist. She made her character’s food addiction seem just as destructive as her son’s heroin addiction in Requiem for a Dream. From The Last Picture Show to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, these are Burstyn’s best projects.
10 Big Love
HBO satirized the fundamentalist Mormon lifestyle in Big Love, starring Bill Paxton as a practicing polygamist named Bill Henrickson. Jeanne Tripplehorn co-stars as Barb, Bill’s first wife and the only one of his wives that he’s actually legally married to. Between 2007 and 2011, Burstyn popped up every now and then as Barb’s estranged mother, Nancy Davis Dutton. Despite appearing in just six episodes, Burstyn was an unforgettable part of the show.
Burstyn was one of several guest stars – along with Bruce Dern, Mary Kay Place, and Sissy Spacek – to be nominated for an Emmy for their recurring role in Big Love. Since Barb’s troubled relationship with her mother was always a huge part of her character, Nancy loomed large over the series before she even appeared. And Burstyn, of course, didn’t disappoint when the character was finally introduced.
9 W.
After JFK and Nixon, Oliver Stone concluded his U.S. presidents trilogy with W., a satirical biopic of the then-sitting P.O.T.U.S., George W. Bush. Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks star as the younger Bush and his wife, Laura, while James Cromwell and Burstyn co-star as Bush’s father, former president George H.W. Bush, and his wife, Barbara. The star-studded ensemble also includes Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair, and Thandiwe Newton as Condoleezza Rice.
Stone’s previous political movies had been straightforward dramas, sifting through historical events for a deliberately un-stylized account. But he took a more comedic approach to W. and had a lot of fun mocking the many faux pas of Bush’s presidency. Still, underneath all the SNL-style mockery, the film is surprisingly sympathetic to its subject.
8 Tropic Of Cancer
After helming film adaptations of two other provocative pieces of literature – Jean Genet’s The Balcony and James Joyce’s Ulysses – Joseph Strick tackled the challenge of turning Henry Miller’s autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer into a movie. Although the book was published in 1934, Strick deliberately set the movie in the 1960s to explore a very different version of Paris. Rip Torn plays Miller’s literary persona and an uncredited (but brilliant) Burstyn plays his wife, Mona.
Thanks to its controversial content, Tropic of Cancer was rated X in the U.S. – later changed to an NC-17 rating – and is therefore not that easy to get a hold of today. But it’s worth checking out, if at all possible, because it epitomizes the experimental style of the New Hollywood movement, which was just blossoming at the time. Strick brought Miller’s literary world to life with colorful visuals and equally colorful language.
7 Interstellar
Burstyn is one of three actors to play the role of Murph Cooper in the Interstellar cast. Mackenzie Foy plays Murph as a 10-year-old kid when her father first embarks on his intergalactic mission to find a new home for humanity, and Jessica Chastain plays her as an adult working as a scientist at NASA. Burstyn plays elderly Murph, confined to a hospital bed, when her dad finally returns from space at the end of Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending sci-fi epic.
She deftly carried the baton from Foy and Chastain and played the part with the same bright-eyed optimism that defined the character in their performances. It’s a totally unique situation to play the daughter of an actor nearly 40 years younger, but Burstyn developed a strong on-screen chemistry with Matthew McConaughey in that dynamic. It’s a powerful performance that makes the emotions of the story land.
6 Pieces Of A Woman
Kornél Mundruczó’s Netflix drama Pieces of a Woman chronicles the tragic aftermath of a young couple losing their baby in a complicated childbirth. Vanessa Kirby received an Oscar nomination for her poignant performance leading the Pieces of a Woman cast as the grieving mother, Martha, and was backed up by strong support from Burstyn as her own mother, Elizabeth Weiss, a wealthy Holocaust survivor. Elizabeth is well-versed in overcoming trauma, so she does everything in her power to help her daughter through this difficult time.
Burstyn handles the delicate subject matter of a Holocaust survivor’s backstory with aplomb. The fierce spirit that got the character through her harrowing past shines through in Burstyn’s ferociously moving performance. It’s a wonder why Burstyn didn’t join Kirby on the list of Oscar nominations that year, because the poignancy of her performance matches that of Kirby’s.
5 House Of Cards
Although the legacy of the series is somewhat tarnished by the indiscretions of its star Kevin Spacey, House of Cards is a riveting political drama brought to life with dark humor and sharp self-awareness. The series was teeming with great performances, from Robin Wright as Frank Underwood’s scheming wife Claire to Kate Mara as journalist Zoe Barnes. Burstyn only showed up in five episodes in the role of Elizabeth Hale, Claire’s mother, but she gave a truly memorable performance.
Elizabeth is characterized by her hatred of Frank. She resents her daughter for marrying him, because she feels that Claire is above him. In TV shows about reprehensible antiheroes who feel no remorse about doing terrible things, a character who puts the antihero in their place is always greatly appreciated, and that’s the role Burstyn filled in House of Cards.
4 Requiem For A Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s hard-hitting psychological drama Requiem for a Dream tackles the devastating consequences of addiction in a harshly realistic way. The film draws interesting parallels between the food addiction of Burstyn’s character, Sara Goldfarb, and the heroin addiction of her son, Harry, played by Jared Leto. Requiem for a Dream carries the message that addiction is destructive in all its forms.
Burstyn was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award (and got showered with praise from critics) for her powerful performance in Requiem for a Dream. This movie isn’t for everyone – it’s so grueling and intense that it’s not for the faint-hearted – but it’s filled with challenging, unforgettable imagery. Anyone who doesn’t believe that addiction is a disease will have that opinion turned around by the end of Requiem for a Dream.
3 The Last Picture Show
Peter Bogdanovich helmed one of the quintessential coming-of-age movies with his masterfully crafted, beautifully nostalgic adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. Set in a small town in Texas in the early 1950s, The Last Picture Show revolves around two high school seniors and lifelong best friends: Sonny Crawford, played by Timothy Bottoms, and Duane Jackson, played by Jeff Bridges. Their friendship is complicated when they both fall for Jacy Farrow, played by Cybill Shepherd.
Burstyn plays Jacy’s mother, Lois, who worries about her daughter’s freewheeling lifestyle and laments the lost love of her youth. Just like everyone else in this ensemble, Burstyn gives a profoundly naturalistic performance that makes her character feel like a living, breathing human being. Bogdanovich juxtaposes the beginning of the characters’ adult lives with the cultural and economic demise of their hometown.
2 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Martin Scorsese is often criticized for making male-driven movies that sideline their female characters, but one of his earliest films is a strong female-led drama with an Oscar-winning performance by Burstyn. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore revolves around a widowed single mother and her pre-teen son hitting the road in search of a better life in the Southwest. Burstyn plays the widow, Alice Hyatt, opposite Alfred Lutter as her son, Tommy.
There’s a lot of tragedy in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, but there’s a lot of humor, too. Burstyn deftly balances the two for a deeply touching portrayal of a real, three-dimensional human being. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was made right on the cusp of the feminist movement when Hollywood was finally starting to offer women roles outside of the one-note archetypes they’d always been relegated to.
1 The Exorcist
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is singlehandedly responsible for bringing real respect to the horror genre from snobbish critics’ circles. Friedkin didn’t make The Exorcist as a horror film; he made a straightforward theological drama about a priest questioning his faith and a desperate mother who will do whatever it takes to save her daughter. Audiences had never seen the Devil depicted with such stark realism, and The Exorcist became legendary as one of the scariest movies ever made.
In the role of Chris MacNeil, Ellen Burstyn masterfully conveys the reality of a mother frantically trying to save her possessed child and quickly running out of options. If Burstyn didn’t sell that reality, then the movie wouldn’t be nearly as effective. Chris is universally identifiable, because everyone can relate to the torturous feeling of a parent being helpless to save their child.
