VividLife Radio’s Ed and Deb Shapiro welcome Academy Award Winning Actress Ellen Burstyn, to discuss Lessons in Becoming Myself
By the time Ellen Burstyn arrived in New York to study acting, she’d already worked as a Texas fashion model, a Montreal chorus girl, suffered numerous toxic relationships, and just as many name changes and spiritual paths. Theater legend Moss Hart called her “a natural” but Ellen Burstyn was still trying discover who she was. Ellen’s memoir “Lessons in Becoming Myself” is a graceful story of a personal and professional quest, a life-long journey-by turns triumphant and terrifying, tragic and funny, thoughtful and illuminating.
Ellen is an American actress. Her career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next decade included several films and television series.
Burstyn’s performance in the acclaimed 1971 ensemble drama The Last Picture Show brought her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination, after which she moved from supporting to leading film and stage roles. Burstyn received a second Academy Award nomination for her lead performance in The Exorcist (1973), and won the Academy Award for Best Actress the following year for her work in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
In 1975, she won the Tony Award for her lead performance in the Broadway production of Same Time, Next Year, and received a Golden Globe Award and a fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1978 film version of the play.
Burstyn has worked consistently in film, television and theatre since, receiving multiple awards and nominations along the way, including seven additional Golden Globe Award nominations, five Emmy Award nominations (one win), and two more Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in the films Resurrection (1980) and Requiem for a Dream (2000).
Burstyn was raised Catholic but has converted to Islam, a process which she has written about in detail in her autobiography. Burstyn affiliates herself to all religious faiths as she explains:
“I am a spirit opening to the truth that lives in all of these religions.”
As the great Zen master Alan Watts said: “We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day!” Going Out Of Your Mind with Ed and Deb Shapiro is a chance for you to drop your analyzing and intellectual mind and come into the immediate experience of present awakening. We are irreverent spiritual teachers and don’t take ourselves too seriously so our discussion show has a great sense of humor while also exploring in depth what it means to live with integrity, awareness, kindness, compassion, and humility.
We will be talking with some of the most luminous women and men about how their lives reflect that luminosity, how they relate to the trials and tribulations of ordinary life, and how this can be of benefit to you. They are people from all walks of life: scientists, actors, activists, musicians, comedians, and business leaders – people whose lives you would never have guessed were rooted in meditation and freedom.