Ellen Burstyn ‘stunned’ to receive award celebrating Hollywood’s most successful women

Hollywood screen icon Ellen Burstyn has been awarded at a special ceremony held at the Venice Film Festival in honour of a seven-decade career in film.

The event was hosted by Liberatum – a multi-disciplinary cultural diplomacy foundation – who annually celebrates “women in creativity”, including artists, filmmakers and actors. It marks the first time Burstyn has attended the festival.

The Liberatum Pioneer Award was presented to Burstyn on Wednesday (4 September) by Bones and All star Taylor Russell. The gala, held at the Blue Pavilion in the Palazzina Grassi Hotel, was co-hosted by art collector Aaron Roni Neumark, and featured an in-depth discussion about the actor’s career.

Burstyn, 91, is an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony-winning star, known for her roles in The Exorcist, Requiem for a Dream , and her 1974 Academy Award-winning performance in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Her contributions to television include Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Political Animals.

“I am stunned,” Burstyn told The Independent of Liberatum’s decision to celebrate her career. “It is quite a line up of past recipients, I’m not sure I deserve it, but I am honoured and thrilled.”

She was positive about the future of women in the industry as she said the landscape had “absolutely” changed.

“When I started there may have been one woman director, one or two writers, one editor I know of and maybe one producer. Now there are lots of women in all those fields. There could be more, but it is definitely an improvement.”

Born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan, the actor initially ventured into modelling and dancing after dropping out of high school. But she soon embarked on the career she would spend her life doing and was cast in a Broadway production of Fair Game in 1957.

Burstyn picked the role that has has resonated with her the most throughout her career, stating: “Alice from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore because it aligned with my motherhood, which is my favourite role in life.”

Burstyn listed Resurrection, Requiem for a Dream, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Exorcist, and The Last Picture Show as the films she looks back on most positively on in her career, but added “It’s like being asked who is your favourite child in a large family – it’s a difficult question!”

“We felt it was important for Liberatum to pay respect to someone much older, because the world today seems to forget people after a certain age. We live in a very ageist society,” Pablo Ganguli, founder of Liberatum found Pablo Ganguli said they selected Burstyn to be honoured as a way of combatting ageism in Hollywood.

“We felt it was important for Liberatum to pay respect to someone much older, because the world today seems to forget people after a certain age,” Ganguli said.

“The obsession seems to be with young people. If you look at the Venice Film Festival, most actors and actresses here are young. That’s what the buzz is about. It is especially harder for women.”

Listing Burstyn’s achievements, Ganguli added, “I think it’s essential that we recognise all the good work she has done for women in the cinematic world. For instance, her actor’s studio where she teaches students, and the philanthropic work she does to really change the lives of creatives and young people through scholarships.”

He continued, “You know, the person who discovered Martin Scorsese was not a man. It was Ellen.”

Burstyn and Scorsese worked together on 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which was his first Hollywood production after the independently financed Mean Streets earmarked him as a rising star in Hollywood. Interestingly, Burstyn signed on to the role before Mean Streets was released.

“If we are to move forward at all, it’s essential that we recognise the good work of all those leaders that paved the way for us,” Ganguli said.

Previous recipients of the award, which celebrates contributions made to the advancement of society through art, include Angela Bassett and Brazilian anthropologist and activist Ivete Sacaramentro, who received the accolade at a ceremony in Salvador, Brazil last year.

Set up in 2001, Liberatum’s past recipients, guests, and collaborators have included Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Prabal Gurung, Nicole Kidman, Will Smith, Cher, Mark Ruffalo, Pelé, Hilary Swank, Dame Vivienne Westwood.

Tilda Swinton, Dame Zaha Hadid and Michael Douglas have also received the accolade as have Sir David Attenborough, Frank Gehry, Morgan Freeman, Francis Ford Coppola, David Hockney, Zoe Saldaña, Viola Davis and Pharrell Williams.