The Golden Lion may have brought Ellen Burstyn’s extraordinary career back into the spotlight, but the 93-year-old actress has never really left it. An Oscar, Tony and two Emmys already place her among acting’s rare Triple Crown winners, while her six-decade career has stretched from The Exorcist and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to a surprising new chapter at Venice. 

And this particular Venice moment has another layer: Burstyn is not simply being celebrated for the roles behind her. She is also playing a version of Marilyn Monroe at 100 in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Flesh Impact, turning one screen legend’s unfinished story into a conversation with another.

Ellen Burstyn has a particularly sharp understanding of what separates a performer from a movie star. That perspective shaped the way she approached Marilyn Monroe for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s short film, especially because Burstyn does not see Monroe’s famous persona as something accidental. In her PEOPLE interview, she described the construction of that image with remarkable admiration.

“She did some deep thinking about what qualities make a movie star. She combined innocence and s********. What a brilliant concept,” she said.

Burstyn’s insight was informed by an unusually intimate connection to Monroe’s story. Her masseur, Ralph Roberts, had previously been Monroe’s masseur and confidant, and he told Burstyn about the striking difference between Monroe the person and Marilyn Monroe the phenomenon. As PEOPLE reports, that story stayed with Burstyn because it showed her that Monroe understood the mechanics of celebrity and could consciously step into the persona she had created.

Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn to Portray Marilyn Monroe in ‘Flesh Impact'

That makes Gyllenhaal’s decision to imagine Monroe at 100 feel more like an intriguing piece of cinematic counter-history.

Flesh Impact takes the question of Marilyn Monroe’s lost future and stretches it into something intimate and theatrical. Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the short imagines Monroe at 100, with Ellen Burstyn playing the older version while Dakota Johnson portrays Monroe during her years of fame. The film runs around 17 minutes and was commissioned to mark what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday, with the story placing the older Monroe in an audition, alone on a stage and confronting the vulnerability of performing. 

The casting also creates a fascinating bridge between generations of actors. Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi round out the cast, while Gyllenhaal and Burstyn share an Actors Studio lineage and a belief in digging beneath a character’s surface. Gyllenhaal has said the film ultimately became a story not only about Monroe, but also about Burstyn, Johnson and herself, making Burstyn’s presence particularly resonant at a festival where she is simultaneously receiving the Golden Lion. 

For Burstyn, there is something almost poetic about receiving a career-defining honor while playing a woman whose own career was cut brutally short. Flesh Impact allows her to explore the Monroe the world never got to see, while the Golden Lion celebrates everything the world has been lucky enough to see from Burstyn.

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What do you think of Ellen Burstyn’s take on Marilyn Monroe and her unexpected new role? Share your thoughts in the comments.