In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

221 i Ellen Burstyn Ellen Burstyn is one of stage and screen’s most respected actors. A student of renown teacher Lee Strasberg, she would go on to star in some of Hollywood’s most critically acclaimed films—The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and Resurrection—and work closely with the industry’s most innovative directors: Peter Bogdanovich , Martin Scorsese, and William Friedkin, to name a few. My interview with the Academy Award winner took place at her rented Malibu beach house, where she often retreats for personal time and reflection . I began our interview by asking her to confirm one of my key findings in my two-year exploration of the actor’s experience. ‘‘Do great performances happen when actors expose and reveal their essential selves through their characters?’’ ‘‘Yes. You have that right. The study of acting is the study of how to do precisely that. First, find out what your essential self is; second, how to make contact with it—that dimension of your being; and third, how to do it in front of people. It is a three-step process.’’ ‘‘Acting is the projection of the self?’’ ‘‘Of the deeper self. When you say, ‘I am,’ understand that you’re referring to the self behind the ego. To be able and willing to go there takes lots of practice, often years. You have to be enormously prepared because your animal self wants to protect you and recoils from being seen.’’ ‘‘So an internal battle ensues between the self and the ego?’’ ‘‘Yes, until you surrender the ego and are willing to expose your soul in public. Certain things have to be sacrificed in order to do that: the image of yourself as you think you are or you’d like to be, or the image of yourself dictated by your ego. You have to be willing to just be with what is, which you think will be less pretty. You think that the world is going to see you in all your ugly truth, but in fact, truth is always much more beautiful then the ego’s composition of its protective fantasy. Acting, you see, is a spiritual journey and practice.’’ ‘‘Why is it so di≈cult for us to own our real selves and be present with it?’’ ‘‘Because we become socialized at a very early age. Mothers tame their 222 The Actor Within children so that they’re manageable and acceptable; otherwise, they’d be wild, uncontrollable children. We’re taught to conform, but we have to deconform ourselves to get back to the wild animal within. Once you say you want to be an artist, you have to take yourself on as an artistic project to get back to the soul and begin mask removal. That takes work.’’ ‘‘How do we remove our masks to bear the soul?’’ ‘‘There are many approaches to that work of looking in the mirror. There is psychotherapy, Buddhism, acting class . . .’’ ‘‘Acting class? How does acting class do that?’’ ‘‘When I say acting class, I don’t mean acting class that teaches you how to pretend. I mean acting class where the teacher’s intention is for you to get to your truth, where you begin chipping away at your false face. I was so lucky to get to Lee Strasberg because that’s what he did. It was work. And it took me a long time because I kept trying to be charming and cute and sexy and pretty and funny and dramatic, all those things I thought an actor should be. It didn’t occur to me that what I was really striving for was to be real. That’s why I continue working at the Actors Studio. It was there that I came in contact with the process of soul development and the culture of my own essence.’’ ‘‘How does acting and its training teach us about ourselves?’’ ‘‘The training stimulates the self and provides an environment where the unconscious can speak. I’ve had experiences when I’m playing a character that I think I understand and suddenly during rehearsal an impulse will come up out of nowhere—What was that? So I start paying attention to it, and it takes me on a trail where I can say, Oh, I see, she does that because really what she’s after is this. So I start following that trail, and it takes me back to...

Share