Ellen Burstyn - Other Activities

Other Activities

During the 1970s, Burstyn was active in the movement to free convicted boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter from jail.

In 1981, Burstyn recorded "The Ballad of the Nazi Soldier's Wife" (Kurt Weill's musical setting of Bertolt Brecht's text "Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?") ('And what did the soldier's woman get?') for Ben Bagley's album Kurt Weill Revisited, Vol. 2.

Burstyn served as president of the Actors' Equity Association from 1982 to 1985.

In 1997, Burstyn was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. In 2000, she was named co-president of the Actors Studio, alongside Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel.

She is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party. In the documentary PoliWood, Burstyn goes to several political events during the 2008 election season as a backer of Barack Obama, and at one point talks sadly about how civil competition between Democrats and Republicans does not exist anymore.

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