New York Daily News, October 26, 2006 "She's for Real" By Elizabeth Weitzman

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It would be easy to assume that Ellen Burstyn has had a charmed life. Born Edna Rae Gilholley in 1932, she left Detroit-where she was captain of her high school cheerleading team-to become an actress. After a brief stint modeling, she landed the very first Broadway role she auditioned for. And her first high-profile film, The Last Picture Show, resulted in her first Oscar nomination.

Hollywood loves nothing more than the shiny surface of success and, clearly, Burstyn has had plenty of it. So why stir up trouble? Why write a book, at age 74, that bluntly lays bare what she calls the "bizarre contrast between the success of my public life and the terror and trauma of my private life."

Because occasionally, there are artists whose inspiration is not fortune or celebrity but the often-ugly study of truth. Burstyn has always gone for the jugular onscreen, so it stands to reason that she'd aim for the same brutal clarity off-screen, as well.

"I didn't see any sense in writing a puff piece just to flatter my ego," she says about her new autobiography, Lessons in Becoming Myself. "I thought, truth is always best."

And truthful she always is. She shares, in unflinching detail, how horrific parental cruelty bled into terrifying spousal abuse; the ways an illegal abortion led to heartbreaking infertility, and how a loving third marriage descended into an ongoing nightmare while her husband battled mental illness. "I've had a very glamorous life," Burstyn notes dryly, "but not a very pretty one."

In the book, she describes childhood trips to the movie theater as a brief escape from hardship; as an adult, she has used the medium to explore tough issues that few others are willing to address. Having had a mother who lied about her age, for example, Burstyn refuses to do the same, and regularly explores women's deep-seated fears of growing old.

What is remarkable, she observes, is how little things have changed since 1972's The King of Marvin Gardens, in which she played a beauty who loses her mind when she starts to lose her looks.

"I do what needs to be done," she admits. "Im not anti-cosmetic help. But it's one thing if you need a little tightening when you start sagging too much. To see young women cutting up their faces, uncomfortable in their own skin, thats really frightening. Vitality is not on the surface; its in the depth."

Burstyn's discomfort with superficiality extends well past the physical, which, says Jeanine Basinger, chair of Wesleyan University's Film Studies Department, "should make her a role model for every young actress. You just have to look at Burstyn to see that it can be done the right way-to retain integrity and focus, and refuse to be swamped by the false god of fame."

Indeed, despite popular success in movies like The Exorcist, Burstyn's career has been driven primarily by a need to expose and examine.

When she won an Academy Award for Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore, she was, essentially, playing herself: an utterly overwhelmed single, working mother (she adopted a son in 1961). While that may not sound radical today, says film historian David Thomason, "she was standing for a whole range of women who didn't often get films made about them" in the 1970s.

In fact, Burstyn has always gone out of her way to represent real women, with real problems. Determined to push herself "until that last gasp," Burstyn celebrated her 68^th year by portraying the frightening deterioration of a lonely widow in Requiem for a Dream. The performance landed her a sixth Oscar nomination, but while she acknowledges that "it's always nice to get a pat on the back," she quickly returned her focus to another passion-pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.

An ordained minister and a practicing member of Sufism, Burstyn's quest for knowledge has sent her across the globe, though it was while writing the book that she found many on the answers she was seeking. "It takes effort to consciously expose ourselves," she says. "But eventually you go, 'I'm okay in this skin.' And I'll stand up for it."

"Honestly," she adds, "I just can't see the value in pulling punches at this point."