Top 45 Quotes & Sayings by Ellen Burstyn

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

When we did 'The Last Picture Show,' the whole cast was unknowns, and we all got careers from it. Well, I don't think this could be done now.

It's a sin to have your films not to make money.

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.

What happens is you submit your script with an idea of what the budget might be, and the financier will offer you less than that. In order to do it for less, it means cutting out the art, usually.

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.

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

I'm interested in the cosmos. I want to know what's out there and how connected we are.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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 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 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.

Bob Duvall is a great actor because each time out, he creates a whole, complete character. You have the feeling that you're not seeing an actor at all, but a fully realized human being. Think of how he was in The Godfather. If you didn't know Bobby, you'd think that he really was Tom, the consigliere. Then you see him in Santini, and he's completely different. He's not only a personality, he's a consummate actor.

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

To me, it's a very moral film. If my son were a teenager now, I would drag him to see it.

When you recognize what your talents are, a happy life is developing them to the greatest extent you can.

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?'

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

Everything gets old if you do it often enough.

Regret is a toxin that I try not to allow in my body.