Ellen Burstyn talks about her controversial Emmy nomination

When Ellen Burstyn received an Emmy nomination based on a fourteen-second cameo appearance in the HBO film Mrs. Harris, many critics used the nomination as an example of how out of touch Emmy voters were with the viewing public.

Even Burstyn herself was shocked by the nomination as she told AP Radio. This was the first time she made any public remarks about the nomination, and as one would expect, she thought it was as silly as everyone else thought it was. "My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and, ultimately, I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear," she joked.

The critics had a good point; as good an actress as Burstyn is (she won an Oscar thirty-two years ago for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), fourteen seconds is not long enough to determine whether a performance is award-worthy or not. Luckily, she didn't win; he co-star in Mrs. Harris, Cloris Leachman, took the award.