Ellen Burstyn is an Academy Award-winning American actress. She was born Edna Rae Gillooly in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Correine Marie and John Austin Gillooly, who was a building contractor. She is of Irish, French, Pennsylvania Dutch and Native American ancestry, and was raised Catholic. Her parents divorced when she was young. She would later refer to her mother as tough, violent and controlling. She left home at age 18.

Burstyn debuted on Broadway in 1957 and joined Lee Strasberg's The Actor's Studio in 1967. In 1975, she won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Same Time, Next Year (a role she would reprise in the film version, three years later). In 1990 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Until 1970, she was credited as "Ellen McRae" in nearly all her film and TV appearances.

Burstyn won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1974 for her performance in the movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, directed by Martin Scorsese She received her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1971 for the film The Last Picture Show, and was subsequently nominated for Best Actress in 1973 for the horror movie The Exorcist, in 1978 for Same Time, Next Year, in 1980 for Resurrection, and for Requiem for a Dream in 2000.

In the early to mid 1960's, Burstyn played Dr. Kate Bartok on the NBC soap opera, The Doctors. She worked on several primetime television shows of the 1960s, including guest appearances on Perry Mason, Maverick, Wagon Train, 77 Sunset Strip, The Big Valley and Gunsmoke. She hosted Saturday Night Live in 1980. In 1986, she had her own Abcsitcom, The Ellen Burstyn Show costarring Megan Mullallyas her daughter and Elaine Stritch as her mother. It was canceled after one season. From 2000 to 2002, Burstyn appeared in the CBS television drama That's Life. In 2006, she starred as a bishop in the controversial NBC comedy-drama The Book of Daniel.

Burstyn's most recent film appearance was in The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky, with whom she worked in Requiem for a Dream. She also appeared on a 2007 episode of the HBO series Big Love, playing the mother of Polygamist wife Barbara Henrickson.

In 2008, Burstyn returned to the stage in Stephen Adly Guirgis's The Little Flower of East Orange, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffmanin a co-production by LAByrinth Theater Company and The Public Theater in New York City. The off-Broadway production ran from March 18 - May 4. Burstyn played the title role of Marie Therese. In addition to her stage work, Burstyn portrayed former First Lady Barbara Bush in director Oliver Stone's film W. She will also guest star in the tenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as the estranged mother of Detective Elliot Stabler.