Lessons in Becoming Myself (Hardcover)

~ Ellen Burstyn (Author)
Key Phrases: crazy psychiatrist, feminine hero, New York, Los Angeles, The Exorcist (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her first book, Oscar- and Tony-winning actress Burstyn has cast a life story that could easily light up the silver screen, replete with abusive parents, high school tragedy, showbiz triumph, reversals of fortune and a plucky heroine in search of professional and spiritual fulfillment. Burstyn begins with impressionistic memories of her Detroit childhood, including her tumultuous relationship with her mother and stepfather Lou, moving from the scare of her brother's near-fatal struggle with pneumonia when she was not yet 3 to the traumatic illegal abortion she had at age 18. Burstyn's career kicks off a few years later on Broadway, launching her on a challenging path to movie stardom, a number of failed romances-including a mentally ill husband who would stalk her for years-and her globe-spanning search for religion. Burstyn's tell-all works beautifully, thanks to her talent for spare but clear description; the happy story of Stone House, her home in upstate New York for 11 years, covers just a few pages, but Burstyn still makes her farewell to the house resonate: "I walked away with a sense of carrying my own chapel with me." The blemish in this upbeat, chatty book is Burstyn's occasional tendency toward self-help language-"The more I struggled to free myself, the more entangled I became"-but it's easy to forgive, given the honesty, bravery and warmth with which she tells her story.
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From Booklist

Cast as Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist, Ellen Burstyn cinematically confronted the devil. Born Edna Rae Gilloolly, she confronted demons of her own, from her demeaning mother to her psychotic and sadistic husband. Now as one of the most acclaimed and respected actors of her generation, the ebullient Burstyn reflects on her life and 40-plus-year career, nimbly tracing the paths she followed, risks she took, mistakes she made, and lessons she learned to assess the price she paid for hard-earned wisdom. Armed with little more than a burning ambition to refute her narrow Midwest Catholic upbringing, Burstyn resolutely struck out on her own at age 18. Landing in Manhattan, she became a devoted acolyte of Lee Strasberg's Method school of acting, a technique that served her well. Foundering in a violently unstable marriage and still bearing the psychic scars of a damaging childhood, Burstyn applied the same painstaking deliberation to her quest for spiritual guidance, which took her from the heights of the Himalayas to the depths of New York City's homeless shelters. Candid and unassuming, Burstyn's intuitive memoir is a balanced mix of insider theatrical anecdotes and inspired philosophical revelations, a guileless apologia for one woman's desire to authenticate her experiences professional and personal. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 453 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (October 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489297
• ISBN-13: 978-1594489297
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #224,352 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unfinchingly honest and detailed, Ms. Berstyn is a beautiful mutitalented wonder -, November 12, 2006

By	kooky Kid "Bookfiend1818" (east coast) - See all my reviews

Ellen's mother was neither emotionally distant nor simply "challenging" - Ellen was a punching bag for her mother and when she was big enough it stopped because they ( her mother and stepfather) realized she would fight back. Once she was old enough she split the scene physically but this reader was surprised that Ellen continued to have a relationship with her mother until her mother's death at a ripe old age- the good DO die young.( Ellen was physically beaten and tortured by the rage of both her mother and step father for years- this is not an exageration)-. As far as the genetic father - truly creepy , but he's a minor player except when ellen tries to salvage some worth from this relationship.
Bottom line- virtually all healers of this "stripe" ( Ellen) have had backgrounds requiring that they understand the depths of cruelty and jealousy of their own power and overcome and forgive and forgive and forgive. How frightening to be all alone in the world with no support- and threatened daily- aware of the immense talent and bright future up ahead- barely able to breathe and believe it could come true...I was thrilled for Ellen when she leaves home on a bus, penniless but rich in dreams- gleeful to be out of that prison called parental home.Ellen is an open target for men who just want to steal her beauty, but eventually people like Strasberg give her morsels of the truth- she has power- it's called TALENT and jealousy of this was the motive behind her mother's attempts to belittle her- to destroy her.
I enjoyed reading about Ellen's conceptual contribution to the story line and content of her most prominent roles- unlike some readers I suspect that Ellen had an even greater impact on most of the works than she can even decipher from hindsight. It wasn't until recently ( Thank you madonna for one) that women in the arts were given the credit and MONEY ( ie true value) that they deserved. Ellen learns as she moves along but much too late - the statute of limitations has run out. I have just finished the book and it has left me reeling ; the archetypal impact of this story being told - at this time- is very wondrous. Ellen seems to have only a minor grasp of the impact of the heroine's journey she has lived out and revealed to us with no varnish.There are hints at it of course, the word divine feminine kept coming up- and this stuck in my mind- but that's another road completely. Groundbreaking and in some ways non linear- this memoir is very very rich.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, October 26, 2006

By	M. Thomas (Burlington,VT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been a fan of Ellen Burstyn's since I first saw her in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore as a child. I was drawn to the sense of realism she instilled into the character of Alice and soon checked out her other performances in such films as The Exorcist and The Last Picture Show, which proved to me that Alice wasn't a fluke. She is one of the true talents of her generation. Needless to say, I couldn't wait to read her memoirs. What a life she has led! What is most amazing about this memoir is her honesty. She does not shirk the more unpleasant details of her life but faces them head on. I suppose it is this honesty that informs her craft as well. This memoir ultimately has made me admire her all the more.

68 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bigger Than Life, October 24, 2006

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ellen's mother was always too busy for her and could never fully connect with her daughter's dreams. Ellen wound up spending much of her life in a vain effort to impress her mom, and not until full maturity was she blessed with the wisdom that some people are just un-impressable and don't really care very much, even perhaps about their own children. As for her father, much of the pre-publication publicity about LESSONS IN BECOMING MYSELF centered on her weird dad, and all I can say is, you've never read anything like it. Jennifer Connelly, you thought you had it bad in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, but you should have asked Ellen Burstyn for tips on how to handle infinitely sleazy sex situations! Her father, whom she hadn't seen in years, came on to her in a very graphic way, jumping into her bed, when as a young adult she paid a visit to him and his new wife. He never gave up on his hope of bedding her, even on his deathbed! He's sickening and you can't believe she survived this incest trauma, but maybe it just gave her wisdom about men being pigs.

Even before she was famous, Ellen had the knack for attracting genius male artists, and some of the liveliest chapters of her book involve her encounters with the great. You get an extended glimpse of Jackie Gleason (Ellen was one of his dancers on his TV show in the 1950s), and in a very different direction, when she visited France, she was taken by two Texans to meet the elderly modernist painter Marc Chagall at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Chagall was so taken by her that he brought her out to the balcony and sat with her on his terraces, leaving poor Madame Chagall to deal with the other guests inside. Let's see, who else? She met the architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller and he wrote a lovely poem for her, bemoaning the fact that he was too old to make love to her, but their souls would always be intertwined. Oh, and Carlos Castaneda has dinner with her, then shows up the next day with the manuscript of his new book (THE SECOND RING OF POWER) asking her to make a movie of it! "Carlos Castaneda was very real, as were his experiences," she states flatly, but I don't know how she knows this for sure. It wasn't like she went to Mexico with him or anything. Maybe she picked it up from his aura.

She is super into the New Age, so if you get tetchy about New Age notions, you might as well skip this book. I guess you wouldn't be reading a book called LESSONS IN BECOMING MYSELF if you were allergic to the way we think here in California!

By the time she hit it big, Ellen was already in her mid-thirties and more mature at handling stardom than some of her 70s cohorts. She gives unvarnished portraits of the camaraderie of movie sets, and details her adventures making THE LAST PICTURE SHOW in Texas, stuck at a motel for weeks and watching the inevitable romance between Bogdanovich and Cybill Shepherd. Cloris Leachman won the Oscar for the part, and behind her she overheard poor Ann-Margret whisper "I'm sorry, Daddy" (for she, Ann-Margret, had just lost the Oscar to Cloris). This resonated for Ellen Burstyn, who had spent far too much of her life trying to please others. It's a haunting anecdote, and Ellen tells the story well.

Making THE EXORCIST was a different kettle of fish, and the troupe was besieged by supernatural horror both on the screen and off. As Burstyn reports, nearly everyone involved in the film had something horrible happen to them, and Ellen did not escape the curse unscathed. Worse, she was drawn into an intellectual, then eventually romantic relationship with the film's troubled director Billy Friedkin, who ultimately jilted her to marry Jeanne Moreau (Ellen had to read about it in the papers)!

Her romantic life has been filled with trauma, and she is especially unsparing of her own conduct during some of these relationships. One husband, Neil Burstyn, was especially abusive, for due to a schizophrenic breakdown he began to think of himself as Jesus Christ and began stalking her, even after she had divorced him. He showed up in the audience of her Broadway play, SAME TIME NEXT YEAR, and screamed out her name during a tender moment she shared onstage with Charles Grodin. I won't spoil what happens in the story, but it has a bittersweet ending.

There are tremendous accounts of making Bob Rafelson's THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS, nearly a forgotten film today but one of the glories of the so-called "New American Cinema," and also regarding the making of Alain Resnais' PROVIDENCE. Alas, she speaks very little about my own favorite of her films, Jules Dassin's A DREAM OF PASSION with Melina Mercouri.

It is a book of grand ambitions and an inner voyage into the bottomless pit of self. One thing I was surprised about is Burstyn's insistence that she herself was responsible, not only for all that great acting, but for writing or otherwise creating many of her best lines in her very best work. She improvised parts of her role as Chris MacNeil in THE EXORCIST, huge sections of ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANY MORE were her idea, the whole plotline of RESURRECTION she based on her own spiritual journey, and she even came up with the curtain line for SAME TIME NEXT YEAR after it defeated dozens of script doctors. After a while Burstyn's propensity for claiming credit for everything good about any of her projects becomes a little amusing. I think it must stem from her inner insecurity about growing up in the Depression and having everything taken from her all her life.

Otherwise LESSONS IN BECOMING MYSELF is a captivating book that will teach you plenty about acting, technique, style, the power of sufi healing, magic in our lives, the genius of Lee Strasberg, and how to reinvent yourself and keep going on even when everything in your world collapses. I started reading this book after dinner on Friday night and spent the whole weekend on the edge of my seat, trying to contain my rising excitement. This should be a huge bestseller on the scale of Kay Graham's PERSONAL HISTORY or Jane Fonda's MY LIFE SO FAR.