Customer Reviews

Lessons in Becoming Myself

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I was so excited to see this book from Ellen Burstyn having been a huge fan of her as an actress, and did not expect what I read. The title is perfect as it chronicles her search for her true identity and purpose in this life. She acknowledges her own faults but uses them as a springboard to the next level of understanding herself. It is the journey of a woman truly committed to the fulfillment of the search being the search itself and "seeing" things in their truest form - not only in her acting but in all phases of her life.

She has weathered the storm and journeyed deep within to reveal herself culminating in what she obviously treasures as one of her deepest moments as an artist - the scene she shared with her "son" in "Requium for a Dream".

This book is about protecting one's sacred self and allowing that true version to keep going deeper and reemerging a little bit better, truer, more aware.

I had the feeling of being transformed after having read it, and felt the need to commit to myself in the same way. Read this book! It will change your life.

Veteran actress Ellen Burstyn practices Sufism, an Islamic-based set of beliefs that makes extensive use of parable, allegory, and metaphor in seeking the truth and knowledge of oneself. That is pertinent because much of this approach infuses her illuminating autobiography. Rather than go through a straightforward laundry list of her considerable accomplishments and awards, Burstyn looks back at her life as a quest for the authenticity she continues to seek now. It's an admirable tact although long-winded at times given her innate need to explain how isolated events in her life serve a greater whole.

She certainly has a lot of life to cover beginning with her Depression-era childhood in Detroit with an emotionally distant mother. Burstyn took up modeling in Dallas and then acting on Broadway and television series primarily through the 1960's, at the same time studying at the Actors' Studio with Lee Strasberg. She was one of the cheesecake showgirls on "The Jackie Gleason Show", and I will always remember her as the quiet nun smitten with Lee Majors in "The Big Valley". It wasn't until she closed in on forty that she started getting the ripe roles that have become her trademark ever since - the still-flirtatious mother watching her comely daughter repeat her mistakes in Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" (1971); the actress battling satan for her daughter's soul in William Friedkin's box office hit, "The Exorcist" (1973); and her high watermark and Oscar win, the aspiring lounge singer stuck in a Phoenix diner as a waitress in Martin Scorsese's "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974).

Burstyn has maintained her standing with a variety of strong performances in the past three decades as evidenced by her traumatizing turn as diet pill-popping Sara Goldfarb in Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" (2000). Such brilliance, we learn, came as she went through a series of personal setbacks, such as an illegal abortion at 18, several failed relationships, and a mentally unstable husband who became obsessive after their divorce. Burstyn, however, convinces us of her undaunted spirit as she traveled worldwide in a search for spiritual fulfillment. It's an intriguing journey, sometimes verbose but ultimately inspiring as the 73-year old actress teaches us that we should never stop searching for a higher level of self-awareness.

I could not put down Ellen Burstyn's "Lessons In Becoming Myself" after I read through the first thirty pages or so. The book draws directly from Burstyn's personal diary, kept since childhood, providing plenty of detail. I had to adjust to the writing style, particularly in the beginning, since it reads like a diary, not an autobiography. Despite that, this searingly honest memoir will grab you as she charts her journey for authenticity and truth.

Burstyn covers her very difficult childhood - abusive parents and a high school tragedy - through her reversals of fortune to her astounding triumph in show business. She is best known for her groundbreaking film roles in "Alice Does Not Live Here Anymore" (a woman awakens to the process of living her life as a primary, not a secondary, person), "The Exorcist", and "A Requiem for a Dream."

She does not pull any punches as she recounts her childhood in Detroit; her brother's near fatal struggle with pneumonia; an illegal abortion which she felt due to sin kept her from bearing children; her three failed marriages including a mentally ill husband who stalks her for years; and the multiple relationships she entered into whenever a man seemed interested in her (including an affair at age nineteen to a man who was fifty-two). "I was a pushover for any man who actually seemed interested in me."

She talks about her many failures, failures she would cry for. These included failures of judgment, of choices, but most of all, her failures of love. She also admits to her many addictions - cigarettes, marijuana, some drugs (including psilocybin which may have started her husband Neil on his never-to-return psychotic path), men, and alcohol, judging, gossip, negative thinking, and the material world.

The real story in "Lessons" is Burstyn's lifelong spiritual journey as she investigates varied spiritual paths and "healers" in the hope of finding the meaning of life...and "self." She lost her Catholic faith early but quickly came to realize that "God shaped a hole in her heart." Her salvation begins when she ended up in therapy which "began her rescue from the morass of unconscious self-destruction and bad attitude...bringing what's hidden in the shadows into the light of consciousness, recognizing the patterns, deepening the understanding, and literally taking responsibility for who she was."

There is something in Burstyn's story for everyone to identify with and/or to learn from. "Lessons" is a frank and unsparing account of a star's journey as an actor, and a human being.

I found it very difficult to pull myself away from this book. Ellen Burstyn's autobiography reveals a life filled with many obstacles and painful challenges, yet she is able to inspire us to see that the highs outweigh the lows, and that dreams really do come true. Ms. Burstyn doesn't hold anything back. I think it took great courage for her to write this book, exposing the shadows in her life, along with the pleasures. I hope she knows that the end result is a truly valuable expression of sincerity and offers us a glimpse of what the rewards can be, if one perseveres and stands up for what she believes in.

Ellen Burstyn spent her youth in hell, but through the power of love and genius, she triumphed, becoming a complete person and one of the greatest actresses of our time.
This book is as exciting to read as Ellen is to watch. It's got extraordinary honesty, more than I've ever encountered in any biography, it's got depth, it's got warmth, and ultimately, it offers, if you care to find them, lessons in how to live better lives ourselves.
Scientists say the same pattern can be found in all great music. Those same scientists are applying that theory now to literature. What they are analyzing is the pure pulse of the soul, and if they turned their attention to Ellen Burstyn they would see the living manifestation of art's perfect music. It's in her acting and now it's in her writing. Read this book.

This marvelously rich memoir hails from one of our generation's most treasured actors. Not only has she faced (and overcome) many of life's harshest nightmares, but she shows great passion and courage in spelunking the inner caves & tunnels of her heart and life events. Miss Burstyn deserves great acclaim and success with this superb tome, and may we continue to be graced by her presence in the meaty,probing roles that are her trademark. JOHN CAMPBELL

I bought this book after I saw Ellen Burstyn on Oprah. I could tell from her face, and from hearing her speak that she was a master teacher. I read it in 2 or 3 sittings. Ellen Burstyn speaks honestly about the struggles that she has had through her lifetime and how she over came those struggles. She is an inspiration because she made it, in a difficult field, acting, and in a difficult period of time for working women. And she also speaks about her spiritual quest. I think this is a very healing and inspirational book. I think this is a must read for all women. I am glad that I read this book, and I am glad that I own this book.