Cheers to Ellen Burstyn for her Emmy-worthy guest turn on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. The Oscar-winner brought heart-wrenching life to the role of Bernadette Stabler, Eliot's bipolar mom. Her extended scene with her estranged son (the always-excellent Chris Meloni) was ...
read more
A possible side effect of Tim Robbins' new series? It's got Ellen Burstyn on its roster.According to Variety, the Oscar-winning actress has joined the upcoming Showtime drama, Possible Side Effects, that explores the inner workings of a family-owned pharmaceutical company.Burstyn will play the matriarch of the Hunt clan, which presumably includes already-announced stars Josh Lucas and Tim Blake Nelson.Robbins is writing, directing and executive producing the project, along with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Daniel Thomas. Now how about we get Susan Sarandon on board too? — Joyce Eng
read more
Stabler's mom has got it going on. Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn has been cast as Detective Stabler's bipolar mother on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, TVGuide.com has exclusively learned. My SVU moles hint that Burstyn's visit to the series will be "explosive" (they actually used that word), and with this kind of acting firepower on board, I say bring on the conflagration. Burstyn will appear in only one episode.Playing complicated matriarchs is nothing new to Burstyn. She won a Best Actress Oscar for playing a young widow and mother in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and has been nominated five other times, including for playing Jared Leto's pill-popping Coney Island ma in Requiem for a Dream. More recently, the actress had a memorable turn on Big Love last season as Barb's loving, dignified, though ultimately disapproving parent. What do you think of this casting? Can't you just picture Burstyn making Chris Meloni take out the trash? "But, maaa…." — Mickey O'Connor...
read more
James Cromwell will play President George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn will play Barbara Bush in W Oliver Stones biopic about the current President Bushs formative years according to Variety Cromwell and Burstyn join Josh Brolin in the title role and Elizabeth Banks as First Lady Laura BushProducers hope to fast-track the film into theaters before the November presidential elections Mickey OConnor
read more
Former TV gangster Michael Imperioli will find some redemption this Sunday, Dec. 9, at 9 pm/ET on ABC, in the Oprah-produced tear-jerker For One More Day.
Imperioli has played a hard-nosed detective (Law & Order), a pervy telephone caller (Girl 6), a gangster wannabe (Goodfellas) and, unforgettably, a mobster junkie (The Sopranos). So who would have guessed that one of his biggest acting challenges would come in an Oprah Winfrey-produced TV-movie that requires him to… throw a baseball?
"I'm not gonna lie, I'm not a good ballplayer, certainly not a natural one," says Imperioli, 41, a Mount Vernon, New York, native who grew up rooting for the Yankees. "I spent some time trying to pick the brain of [Yankees catcher] Jorge Posada and I worked with a trainer, but
read more
