At Venice, Ellen Burstyn reflects on playing Marilyn Monroe

Of all the roles Ellen Burstyn might have been offered in her 90s, that of Marilyn Monroe seemed fairly unlikely. But then one day Maggie Gyllenhaal came to her apartment to talk about a wild idea: What if she played Monroe at 100? “It sounded like a good idea to me,” Burstyn said.

Their 17-minute short film, “Flesh Impact,” had its world premiere on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where Burstyn, 93, also received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Though Burstyn never met Monroe, who died at 36, there was overlap. They shared a massage therapist, who would tell stories about his late friend. He even told Burstyn that she was actually quite like Monroe, and lent her one of Monroe’s old books called “The Thinking Body,” which had some treasures like old receipts inside.

“I knew that she was not what she presented as her persona and that actually that’s a persona that she created,” Burstyn said. “She created the whole concept of Marilyn Monroe and played it.” Once, she saw her in a nightclub and Monroe nodded at her.

“She was so startlingly beautiful and she caught my eye and ... I felt that she recognized me,” Burstyn said. “I was very early in my career. And the fact that she recognized me, I just felt so honored and pleased.”

The Monroe short came about in somewhat unconventional fashion, through the luxury car company Genesis, whose chief marketing officer Amy Marentic approached Gyllenhaal about doing something around what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday in June.

Gyllenhaal asked for a weekend to think about it, and landed on Marilyn, at 100, “doing basically the most vulnerable, one of the most vulnerable things I think an actor can do, which is audition, alone on a stage.”

Burstyn was the first actor she thought of. “I just had this feeling maybe this is an opportunity for her to think about things in a new way,” Gyllenhaal said. The two found that they shared a similar language and approach to the work. “We are interested in the depth of what’s being revealed. And we both want to go there,” Burstyn said. “If we’re going to be doing anything, we’re gonna be doing it from there.”

Though nothing has really changed very much in how Burstyn chooses roles over the years – she just wants to be moved or challenged – having a set populated largely by women was a far cry from how things were when she was starting out.

“When I first started working, which was 150 years ago, there were no women on the set. There were no women crew. There was no woman behind the camera. If a woman was on set, that meant that she was an actress,” Burstyn said in a news conference Monday. “Then, slowly, thanks to blessed Gloria Steinem who just died, the consciousness started to change.”

Burstyn is also in a feature film, Kornél Mundruczó’s “Place to Be” alongside Taika Waititi, that’s playing at the festival. She’s feeling “slightly overwhelmed” by the whole thing.

“I have been asking myself, why do I deserve this? What have I done? It’s a long career,” she said. “And I finally came to it today that I wouldn’t have had this career without my training.”

Perhaps that is a bit modest for someone who has won an Oscar, for “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” a Tony and two Emmys for her acting. In her over 50 years in the business, she’s appeared in around 150 films and is a co-president of The Actors Studio. Burstyn even teaches acting classes occasionally, continuing the legacy of her mentor and acting coach Lee Strasberg.

“Her artistry, which could illuminate pain and everyday resilience with dignity, irony and courage, remains an absolute model of authenticity in performance and civic engagement within the craft of acting,” festival director Alberto Barbera said in a statement.

Associated Press