Oscar, Emmy and Tony-award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Liberatum Pioneer Award for her lifetime contribution to cinema.
The 91-year-old acting legend will be honored at a “Women in Creativity” event and gala dinner in Venice on Sept. 4 at the Blue Pavilion in the Palazzina Grassi Hotel on the Grand Canal. Burstyn will also take part in an on-stage discussion of her decades-long career.
Burstyn made her acting debut on Broadway in Fair Game in 1957 and was a TV regular throughout the 1960s but her breakthrough came on screen in the 1970s, with Oscar-nominated performances in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as the widow Alice Hyatt in Martin Scorsese’s romantic drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1974. A year later, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress for Same Time, Next Year. She reprised the same role in Robert Mulligan’s movie adaptation, earning her her fourth Oscar nomination of the 70s. Two more would follow with Daniel Petrie’s Resurrection (1980) and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000).
On the small screen, Burstyn has received 8 Emmy nominations, winning twice: In 2009 for a guest actress spot on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and in 2013 for Best Supporting Actress in a miniseries or movie playing Margaret Barrish in Greg Berlanti’s Political Animals.
The Venice event is organized by Pablo Ganguli’s “culture diplomacy” organization Liberatum and co-hosted by arts patron Aaron Roni Neumark. Last year in Venice, Liberatum honored Black Panther star Angela Bassett and the Brazilian anthropologist and activist Ivete Sacramento.
The 81st Venice Film Festival runs from Aug. 28-Sept. 7.
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