I live in New York, but I am always delighted to come to Europe because I am European and grew up here until I was 20. I am not only Italian, I am partly Swedish. When my parents divorced, I was three years old and went to live in Paris... when I am offered a film in Europe, I come with great enthusiasm!
— Isabella Rossellini
Before Darwin, our world was very religious. People saw altruism as something given by God for us to be good so that we could go to Paradise.
Market research shows that older women like seeing older women in ads, and that younger women do, too - because they see them and are not frightened of growing older.
When I grew up, we always had our chickens, and we ate our eggs, and we ate our chickens. The family always had a pig, and we would kill it at Christmas and eat it for three or four months afterwards.
People use mobile phones in this very distracting environment where you probably don't have time to watch a 30-minute film, but you might have time to look at a film for a minute and learn something you didn't expect while you walk on the streets.
I loved my career as a model, and that evolved into being an actress.
It's a new business for me to be a filmmaker.
It took me a long time to be accepted as an actress, I think, because of the modeling and because of my mother.
If you see a person who's insecure and covers it up, it can be quite a problem. But the person who is insecure and shows you is quite appealing. They give you just the courage to drop your defenses.
The problem with middle age, at least when it comes to modeling, is you seldom see a model who is past 27, 28. If they use anyone older, then it becomes automatically a 'personality' story.
I am the daughter of Mr. Neo-realism: I should gravitate towards narrative simply told, character, the truth. And I do love those movies.
There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I've loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn't really any job for me. It's being marginalized - that's the sad part.
When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.
True elegance for me is the manifestation of an independent mind.
In interviews, the first question I get in America is always: 'What do you do to stay young?' I do nothing. I don't think aging is a problem. What irritates me a little is growing fatter. It irritates me that if I eat what I want to eat, it shows.
I was born with a love of animals, the same way I was born with brown hair. When I was a little girl in Rome, I always had pets, which I adored.
My father's films are often very slow for the modern audiences, which are used to a lot of editing. It's the audience that watches the film instead of the director dictating the reaction he wants from you.
The first time I went to Hollywood, I was 25 years old. My background was mostly Italian.
I always encourage women to let their individuality show by not covering up what they perceive as flaws. When I see a woman with the natural wrinkles of time on her face, I do not see the wrinkles at all, but when I see a woman trying to cover them up with too much foundation or concealer, all I see are her wrinkles.
If you look at most beauty advertisements, you would think that makeup is only for beautiful women in their early twenties.
I grew up in Italy, and our country is a country of great agriculture and food produce. It wasn't like I was urban and only knew about high-heeled shoes and purses and never knew where my eggs came from.
I never really think about what I have to do to stick to my image. I just follow what I like to do. Sometimes it's glamorous, sometimes it's not.
When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model.
There are so many spiders, and their rituals, their mating rituals, their courtship ritual, can be very, very different.
I started modeling at 28. I'm 5-feet-7 1/2, and I never went on a diet. I followed what my doctor told me: 'It's good to have a little bit of fat. Your weight is fine. Don't go any lighter.'
The secret of using makeup for fashion is to have fun with it. When people see that you are playful, that's attractive. Sometimes people apply makeup because they have bags under their eyes or because they don't feel good, and that just reads 'insecure.'
I think I was always interested in animals. If a man likes a woman, you know, he might discuss business, but there's a part of his brain that is looking at the girl coming in and checking the girls. I do the same with animals.
There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.
By the time I was successful with covers of 'Vogue' and 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'Vanity Fair' and the Lancome contract, someone asked how old I was. They almost fainted when I said 33.
Once I realised that my job as a model was to emote in front of the camera, I thought, 'Well now, I just have to add words, and I can do films.' But also, my success as a model made me more confident about becoming an actress because, just in case I failed, I thought, 'Well, you know, if I failed as an actress, I can do another job.'
I live in New York, and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage, I feel relief; in our urban environment, other animals are dying out.
I've had a lot of 'aha' moments, but the big 'aha' about growing older is the mental freedom.
My films are comical films. They are made to laugh at. They are comical - and scientifically correct.
I always have parmigiano-reggiano, olive oil and pasta at home. When people get sick, they want chicken soup; I want spaghetti with parmesan cheese, olive oil and a bit of lemon zest. It makes me feel better every time.
If a hamster has too many babies she knows she cannot carry, she not only abandons them, but she eats them. That means she doesn't have to go out and hunt for food for herself.
Women who stay true to themselves are always more interesting and beautiful to me: women like Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Anna Magnani - women who have style, chic, allure and elegance. They didn't submit to any standard of beauty - they defined it.
Many years in New York has made me urban, and I won't eat my chicken because I met him personally!
I'd like this to become my principal activity: to make films about animals. Of course it's always interesting to model, but it depends who you are working with. I will continue to make acting, too, but I'm old - I'm getting tired of it.
Animals are everywhere. Some are more romantic, like tigers and elephants and chimpanzees, and some are less romantic, like earthworms, but they are just as interesting.
I always loved experimenting in film.
I live in the country. I'm a bird-watcher, an oyster-raiser. You know, I'll do anything that - raise dogs for the blind as a volunteer.
I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Everybody in my family was in films, and they succeeded so much, I thought, 'It's better for me to do something else,' and they agreed.
Maybe there's some kind of modeling that can be tedious, like catalogue modeling, but there's a kind of modeling, with runways or working with Richard Avedon, that's not very far from acting. Besides the fact that you don't have a partner to react to, the body language is the same.
That is the great pleasure of working with great directors. You get to look at the world through many different prisms. I guess I love talent, whatever form it takes.
I don't look at 'Vogue' to ask what I'm going to wear. Because it's something on a body too young. I have to look at the social pages to see women my age. To see how Amanda Burden is dressed and say, 'Hmmm. Maybe I should try that.'
Most people divorce because one in the couple falls in love with someone else: it's a common cause of divorce. I still think that it's tinted - this is my opinion - with a veil of racism and American puritanism.
I became an actress way into my 30s because I thought that I had to find my own way, and that's why I worked so much in modelling, until I realised that the differences between acting and modelling weren't that great. I always say that modelling is a little bit like being a silent actress.
I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.
I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean.
I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.
