Ellen Burstyn received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival on Monday, presented by jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal, who praised the 93-year-old actress's body of work across films including The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show and Requiem for a Dream. The ceremony preceded a screening of Flesh Impact, Gyllenhaal's short film in which Burstyn plays a version of Marilyn Monroe opposite Dakota Johnson, and the star received a lengthy standing ovation that moved her to tears before her acceptance speech.

In her speech, Burstyn reflected on her decades-long career spanning film, stage and television, recalling in 1975 becoming the third woman to win both a Tony and an Oscar in the same year, and later completing a "triple crown" with an Emmy for Law & Order: SVU. She also recounted a story about filming Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore with Martin Scorsese, in which following a white line on a mountain road helped her avoid driving off a cliff, using it as a metaphor to close her speech: "I pray that my own country will, very soon, find its own white line." Burstyn is at Venice with two films, Flesh Impact and Kornél Mundruczó's Place To Be, alongside Taika Waititi and Pamela Anderson.