Ellen Burstyn has revealed that a shared masseur gave her an unusually intimate window into Marilyn Monroe’s life, years before she was cast as an imagined older version of the Hollywood icon. To unversed ears, the connection may sound almost too perfect, as if scripted for a film about Monroe. But it began long before Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Flesh Impact existed, because as per Burstyn herself, these stories stayed with her for years before teaming up with Gyllenhaal.

For Burstyn, the route to Monroe ran not through a studio lot, but through conversations on a massage table.

In her Entertainment Weekly interview, Ellen Burstyn described her connection to Marilyn Monroe as "odd". She shared that it was her private masseur, one who happened to have worked closely with Monroe as well, who became her pipeline to a projection of the actress she was going to embody years later.

“My masseur was hers, and he was her confidant, and they were very close,” she said. “And when he became my masseur, she was already gone. But I would lie on the table and hear Marilyn stories for years, so I knew a lot about her.” It was those repeated accounts that gave Burstyn a sense of the woman behind the carefully constructed public image.

Burstyn also shared with EW seeing Monroe in a nightclub during her own early days in Hollywood.

“She was so startlingly beautiful and she caught my eye and she just nodded at me,” Burstyn recalled. “And I felt that she recognized me, and I was very early in my career." For a young actor still finding her footing, a gesture from one of the era’s most recognizable stars carried real weight.

Burstyn began working in the late 1950s, making her Broadway debut in 1957. Monroe, meanwhile, was already an international star, known for films including Some Like It Hot and Bus Stop before her death in 1962. 

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The connection now meets a film imagining the life Monroe might have lived beyond her 100th birthday.

Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Flesh Impact marks what would have been Marylin Monroe’s centenary. Dakota Johnson plays Monroe at the height of her fame, while Burstyn portrays an imagined 100-year-old version of the star. The short film premiered out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival in September, with a cast that also includes Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi.

The title refers to Monroe’s extraordinary screen presence; the feeling that her beauty and magnetism could reach through the screen. Gyllenhaal’s film explores the burden of being an artist in public, making Burstyn’s years of second-hand stories more than an intriguing coincidence. Now, her Monroe is not merely another impersonation, but a glimpse of a life the world never got to witness.

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What do you think of Ellen Burstyn's unexpected connection to Marilyn Monroe? Let us know in the comments.