Ellen Burstyn

Ellen Burstyn won the lead actress Oscar with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The screenplay had been sent to her by John Calley, then the head of Warner Bros.; other producers and actors had turned it down for looking too much like a television soap, while Burstyn liked it for its woman-centred theme. The studio gave her final approval over the screenplay and the right to choose her own director, and because she was alert to how little women were represented in cinema she asked that qualified women be hired into important crew jobs. For the directing she chose Martin Scorsese, whom Francis Ford Coppola had recommended to her. The two of them improvised on the screenplay, shooting a video in which Burstyn played Alice twenty years on and using it to rebuild scenes and propose dialogue. Three years earlier The Last Picture Show had made her a supporting actress nominee; the award went to Cloris Leachman, from that same film. The Exorcist of 1973 and Requiem for a Dream are here too, and Requiem for a Dream brought her the Independent Spirit female lead award.