Burstyn Gets Venice Golden Lion, Prays U.S. 'Finds White Line' — SkimNews
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- Ellen Burstyn received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, with Jury President Maggie Gyllenhaal delivering a tribute that catalogued her roles from The Last Picture Show's Lois Farrow to Requiem for a Dream's Sarah Goldfarb
- The 93-year-old actress was greeted with a multi-minute standing ovation and cried before beginning her speech, on a stage set before a screening of Gyllenhaal's short film Flesh Impact, in which Burstyn and Dakota Johnson portray different versions of Marilyn Monroe
- Burstyn closed her speech by recalling a night shoot for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in which she drove up a mountain with Scorsese, the cinematographer and camera operator on the hood, unable to see the cliff edge — saying she followed the road's white center line to avoid killing them all
- She pivoted from the anecdote to declare: "I pray that my own country will, very soon, find its own white line"
- In 1975, Burstyn became the third woman in history to win both a Tony and an Academy Award in the same year (Same Time, Next Year and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), completing the so-called triple crown of acting with a 2009 Emmy for Law & Order: SVU
- Burstyn also appears at Venice in Kornél Mundruczó's Place To Be alongside Taika Waititi and Pamela Anderson
Why it matters: At 93, Burstyn remains an active working artist with two films premiering at Venice alongside her lifetime honor — the kind of late-career profile that is exceedingly rare. By rooting her political prayer in a literal on-set anecdote from her Scorsese collaboration rather than abstract rhetoric, she turned a craft story into a civic plea, drawing a multi-minute standing ovation from a global film audience.
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