Episode description

This week we’re sharing one of Anna’s favorite episodes. It’s from 2014, when actor Ellen Burstyn invited us into her New York apartment for a sprawling interview. She told Anna about getting on a Greyhound bus to Dallas at 18 with 50 cents in her pocket, and about surviving an illegal abortion. And she described adopting her son, leaving an abusive marriage, and starring as a newly single mom in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The role was based in part on her own life, and it won her an Oscar. "I really think of myself as a work in progress," Ellen Burstyn, then 81 years old, told Anna as they sat in wicker furniture in her Manhattan bedroom, "But I don’t feel I’m necessarily a successful person."

In next week’s episode, you’ll hear a new conversation between Anna and Ellen, recorded just a few weeks ago. But until then, you can also listen back to Ellen’s conversation with journalist and feminist icon Gloria Steinem on our show from 2016 here.