Biografie

Suffered a permanent spinal injury while filming Der Exorzist (1973). In the sequence where she is thrown away from her possessed daughter, a harness jerked her hard away from the bed. She fell on her coccyx and screamed in pain, which was kept in the final version of the released film.

Turned down the lead role in Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest (1975) because she had a sick husband to care for.

Worked as an acrobat and as a model for paperback covers.

Her third (and last) husband, Neil Burstyn was a bright, talented upcoming actor and writer (Die Monkees (1965)). According to Ellen, he eventually degenerated into mental illness and became schizophrenic and violent. He left her just before she became a star. When she refused his pleas to get back together, he stalked and terrorized her for many years. He committed suicide in 1978.

In September 2009, she became the 20th person to have won the Triple Crown of Acting: Academy Award (1975: Alice lebt hier nicht mehr (1974)); Tony Award (1975: Same Time Next Year), and Emmy Award (2009: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)).

Acting feels like a congenital condition to me - it's in my genes.

It's unfortunate but our society is such that, for women in Hollywood, you get to a certain age and just fall off a cliff. But in my case, I refuse to die. I will hang on, by a little finger if necessary.

The main way you grow is in deepening compassion. Somehow when you go through painful experiences you're more sympathetic to other people's experiences. After you've been working for awhile and discover how much material you have to call on, you end up saying, 'Oh, thank god I had an unhappy childhood!' I suppose there are some actors somewhere who have had a happy childhood. I just haven't met them yet.

[on preparing to undertake a complex role] You have hold of a string that you're following, and you're following where this question leads to that question, and it keeps on going until you come to some specific understanding of this human being - as opposed to every other human being in the world.

I'm a deep-water swimmer. Everything on the surface is usually a mask. I always know what's behind the mask.