Ellen Burstyn spoke to reporters at the Venice Film Festival, where the 93-year-old actress is presenting two new films and receiving an honorary Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. She discussed a brief but memorable encounter with Marilyn Monroe decades ago, her new roles in Maggie Gyllenhaal's short film Flesh Impact (in which she plays an imagined elderly Monroe) and Kornél Mundruczó's drama Place to Be alongside Taika Waititi, and reflected on how dramatically opportunities for women in Hollywood have changed since she began her career.

Burstyn recalled that when she started out, film sets were staffed almost entirely by men, a situation that shifted only gradually as women moved into crew roles such as script supervisor and camera assistant. She also described how her Oscar-winning 1974 film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore came about after she rejected a string of scripts offering only stereotypical, subservient female characters, instead persuading Warner Bros. to let her make a film about "women as I know women to be" with then-unknown director Martin Scorsese. She additionally spoke about the physically demanding experience of filming The Exorcist under director William Friedkin, which left her with a back injury.