Ellen Burstyn Talks Working Into 90s with Starring Role In Unexpected Love Story ‘Place To Be’; Pays Tribute To Gloria Steinem – Venice — SkimNews
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- Ellen Burstyn, 93, said at Venice she had been "sure I'd be finished by 40" and called continuing to work at her age "a miracle" she had somehow "attracted into my life."
- Burstyn paid tribute to the late Gloria Steinem (died at 92 in early September), crediting Ms. Magazine as an influence and quoting her "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" line, "It's my life. It's not some man's life that I'm helping him out with."
- Place To Be, directed by Kornel Mundruczo, is a road movie in which Burstyn plays an elderly widow and Taika Waititi a middle-aged man who bond while returning a lost racing pigeon from Chicago to New York.
- Mundruczo said he developed the film specifically for Burstyn after working with her on his 2020 Oscar-nominated "Pieces of a Woman," and set out to create a love story with a "light and tender" tone for women her age.
- The Place To Be cast also includes Murray Bartlett and Pamela Anderson, neither of whom appeared at the press conference.
- Burstyn received Venice's Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement earlier in the week, capping a career that began with early doubts it would survive middle age.
Why it matters: The Venice premiere doubled as a career capstone for a 93-year-old Oscar winner who said she never expected to still be working, and Mundruczo built the film's central love story around her — a concrete instance of a major director tailoring a romantic lead to a nonagenarian woman rather than casting around her.
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