Ellen Burstyn never met Marilyn Monroe. Not properly, anyway. By the time she walked through the doors of the Actors Studio in New York, Monroe was already dead. But the two women did see each other once, across a nightclub table, and Burstyn has been carrying the moment around for the better part of six decades.
“I was enchanted just looking at her. She was such a magical creature,” Burstyn recalled, speaking to reporters at the Venice Film Festival, where she is presenting two films this year and will receive an honorary Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at a ceremony this evening. “And then she looked at me and nodded at me. I was very early in my career, and I thought: I’ve just been recognized by Marilyn Monroe. I carried that in my heart.”
Burstyn plays a version of Monroe, an imagined projection as if the legendary actress had lived into her 90s, in Flesh Impact, a new short film from director Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Bride!). Dakota Johnson plays the younger Monroe in flashbacks. She also appears in Kornél Mundruczó’s drama Place to Be, which screens out of competition in Venice, as an elderly woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a middle-aged divorced man (played by Taika Waititi).
