Food is a big part of my culture, so everyone knows how to cook. When I came to America and asked a babysitter to softboil an egg for my son and she didn't know how, I was shocked.
— Isabella Rossellini
It's nice to go and be a guest on a television sitcom. It pays well; it's easy because generally it's a supporting role, so you go, you do two or three things, you're in touch with people there. They're widely popular, so they're seen by many people.
Every time you work, it's a new film, and generally when you work with auteurs, people that write and direct their films, there's always an originality.
I graduated from Academy of Fashion and Costume Design in Rome. At first, I thought I was going to be a costume designer for films, and then I ended up working in fashion - not as a designer, but mostly as a model.
I loved modeling. I absolutely loved it. I was so happy to get the cover of 'Vogue' - 23 times. I keep each copy. I made more money as a model than as an actress or as a filmmaker. In monetary terms, beauty pays more than anything.
I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?
I have the most fun writing and directing. And I always choose myself as the lead actor.
It always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object.
I live my everyday life as a person, and I react to my photos from a certain distance. When I look at a photo, I detach myself and look at it as a product - not as me, Isabella.
To be an icon is a big job - it's beyond acting. And sometimes it pays, and sometimes it doesn't.
But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome.
A lot of the advertisement is done by saying: first of all, have a complex about who you are.
In America, they are paranoid about ruining the reputations of people once they are dead and cannot answer back. They have this fascination which to me seems cruel and morbid. I do not want any part of it.
If we are completely honest with ourselves, everyone has a dark side to their personalities.
My perfume, Manifesto, was based on the scent of basil.
The reason of my life is not to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
As I grew older, I worked less as an actor and as a model, and I went back to what I had tried to do when I was young but wasn't really available. I'm so glad now to be in my sixties and to be able to go back to school.
I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.
Mammals are very close to us, but bugs are strange. They're more mysterious and exotic.
I seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.
You don't do an experimental film to become rich, so the people who are involved are involved because they enjoy the creative aspect of it.
I'm always a little worried when people have met me in person because I'm worried they'll be disappointed.
When I grew up in Italy in the 1950s, it was still very agricultural. Food was very important; produce was very important. Everyone made their own olive oil. It took me a long time after I moved here to understand that Americans are much further away from their food.
The red carpet has become like a parallel business. The next day, there are TV programmes, and magazines, and it's all, 'Do you like the dress or not like the dress?' and 'Did she look fat?' To keep borrowing dresses and jewellery is like a full-time job. And you have to be a fantasy, which you can never be, so you always feel depressed.
There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.
I am much more radical in my beliefs than my products represent me to be.
I didn't want to become an actress because the competition with my mother would have been to much to live up to.
Although Dorothy in Blue Velvet was humiliated and hurt by men, basically I could react to how she felt.
I'd love to meet Darwin. He caused such controversy over whether God created the earth in six days or whether we evolved over time. I'd love to discuss that with him - what a fantastic conversation!
I wanted to make a film about my dad, a sort of love letter, and explain what I understood of his cinema, which was so utopian. I also wanted to give the sense of his cinema, because they have never been very big box-office, but they were very influential.
I've always been an entertainer all my life; I come from a family of entertainers. I always made, very pretentiously, a comparison with Agatha Christie. Her inspiration was crime, and I'm sure she must have taken courses or read about crime, because it was the basis of her stories. But ultimately, it was her own fantasy.
I always dreamed when I was a little girl interested in animals that I would go live in Africa. Then I found out that you can look in your backyard, and you can do your own safari.
Animation translates well to a small screen. When you look at Walt Disney or Chuck Jones - you know, Bugs Bunny - there really isn't any difference if you watch on a very big screen or a computer screen.
I would love to be a field biologist. I would love to do what Jane Goodall did, just totally immerse myself in the life of one specific species for years and study every aspect of its behavior until little by little, all of these patterns become clear. That would be great, but I don't know if I have it left in me.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have always loved animals and been fascinated with them.
I don't wear much makeup, except during work. I felt lucky to be chosen to be a model. I used to joke, 'The next best thing to winning the lottery is having a beauty contract.'
One of the great issues in biology is the origin of altruism - of why you would do something for someone else that could hurt you - and Darwin posited that it might be rooted in maternal instinct, in sacrificing yourself for your children.
When David left me I became totally brokenhearted.
I like to extend myself as an actress and David really helped me.
But I don't really see myself as a role model. I'm not a dictator, or someone who wants to be adored!
I am now at an age when they wanted me to play her mother.
These same people seem to forget that mother also took a lot of chances with the type of roles she played.
