Isabella Rossellini Regis Dialogue with John Anderson

John Anderson: We’re at the Walker Art Center for a Regis Dialogue with Isabella Rossellini, an actress of great dignity, beauty, and self-possession. Her talent is expressed in a range of films including Fearless, Left Luggage, Big Night, and Feast of the Goat. Isabella Rossellini has risen above her own enormous beauty by taking it lightly, while using it against itself in such films as Blue Velvet or even by playing the beer-legged lady, Helen Port-Huntley, in The Saddest Music in the World. These are the kinds of roles that make you love an actress.

I’m John Anderson film critic, and I’ll be your guide through Rossellini’s work. We will now begin our Regis Dialogue with Isabella Rossellini.

Isabella Rossellini: I always felt like protecting my dad. He was always fighting with the critics, sometimes ending up so exhausted, he would check himself into a clinic for stronger doses of glucose to ready himself for the next round of battles.

Isabella Rossellini: Thank you.

John Anderson: Thank you everyone. Thanks to the Walker Center and the terrific people here, we’ve been handled very well. It’s rather melancholy in that you seem to think your father’s films are being forgotten.

Isabella Rossellini: They are. Well, I think that the great danger is for filmmakers that don’t have ... They don’t pay any attention to commercial success as my dad did, because he worked with very independent productions, small companies that often went bankrupt. So, there is a lot of lawsuits still today, 29 years after his death, some of the rights are uncleared. Also, films that don’t have a commercial life, they could be interesting.

My father was more of an influential director than a commercial director, but I think when you study history of cinema, all the students knew about new realism, and they were the 16-millimeter distribution of films that became obsolete. And because my father is not commercial, none of these 16-millimeter were printed back into DVDs, which is now what students see on universities. So his films are not seen.

John Anderson: Is there, with the 100th anniversary of his birth though, is there any move to get this stuff back in circulation?

Isabella Rossellini: Some, some attempts. It is always a problem of money, and the problem was still that there are some lawsuits unresolved 29 years later.

John Anderson: Wow. It’s interesting you have Hitchcock there arguing with your father. Hitchcock is often credited with Psycho, for killing off Janet Leigh 30 minutes into the film, but your father actually did, with Rome, Open City had done it 15 years before.

Isabella Rossellini: The killing?

Nov 5, 2006 1 John Anderson: The killing of a major character before the film was ... Midway through the film. Anna Magnani was killed midway.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes. But see, you talk about it in a way like commercial films, like you don’t kill a major character. You don’t kill a leading lady. That’s not the way my father thought. I found out this later on when I came to America, and this is an industry, film industry. People talk a language that I never heard at home. Even with my mother, like career moves. I never knew what they meant really.

John Anderson: Well, you’ve been a big one for career moves, huh?

Isabella Rossellini: Yeah, or agent planning your thing, or not killing a character, or a leading star, because my father just told a story that he heard in the streets. In fact, there’s also the little quotation from Open City when Anna Magnani’s killed, it was just something that happened, and he went back and reconstructed what happened. So, I don’t think he ever thought about, “Oh, this is a leading character.” And he also was not an actor, so he didn’t have a problem of stars wanting to be liked all the time.

John Anderson: Right. Guy Maddin has written that he talked you into playing all the different characters.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, he did. It was his idea. At first I thought I was going to ask some friend actors to play Hitchcock or Selznick, and Guy said, “No, you should do them because it will be clearer for the audience that this is the way you understood that this is nothing.” I didn’t want it to be a documentary or the ultimate just like what my father said, because I might be wrong. This is what I understood.

So, interpreting everybody, it was clearer to the audience, this is what I understood of the argument of what film should be, and what cinema and the importance of cinema.

John Anderson: Well, do you think this has been an influence on your own work with such relatively uncommercial directors? Directors who have gone completely outside the mainstream?

Isabella Rossellini: What was it?

John Anderson: Well, you said your father was an unconventional noncommercial filmmaker.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes. Oh, I’m sure it had a lot to do with it. I feel comfortable with the director that are not in the mainstream. They feel like family to me. Like Guy Maddin feels very much like my dad. Though his film style is different, his lifestyle is similar.

John Anderson: Does he stay in bed a lot?

Isabella Rossellini: Had no money, they’re always followed by 10 fans. They love them with a passion, but there are 10.

Nov 5, 2006 2 John Anderson: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. And they’re going to see Borat right after they see that, right? You talk about the morality of the image, and that’s something that recurs a lot with you in interviews, and then in the film as well. You had something of a struggle when you became a model that you found it either a stupid job. I think you’ve said once in—

Isabella Rossellini: Well, I started very late because I was told that it was stupid. I got the bid, when you’re 20, you want to be intelligent. But later on when you give up, you find it a relief to be stupid, and seizing it, but at 20, no.

John Anderson: You can go into politics, you can handle that.

Isabella Rossellini: So I became a model at 28, and then they said ... Then it was a big thing in the articles, she’s so old, she’s so old, but nobody asked how old I was. So, it’s not that I’d hidden it or anything. I didn’t even know that a model had to be 14.

John Anderson: Right.

Isabella Rossellini: But actually I did enjoy modeling quite a lot. So once I started it, I repented not to have started earlier, because I know I did have a very long career as a model, 20-year career, I could have had 30 or 35 if I had started at 14, and I was sorry not to have done it. It was stupid stereotypes saying this. Well anyway, I had a good run.

John Anderson: Yeah. Well, I think I remember reading a story about you going to Taiwan and people genuflecting in front of you and kissing your hand. And you being somewhat, I think, overwhelmed at that point by the power that a single image would have.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, especially advertisement. Laura Dern, the actress Laura Dern, left a message in my machine saying, “I’m doing a film in Mexico in the middle of nowhere, and there is just two things that are familiar: an advertisement, a sign of Coca-Cola, and one of you doing some cream or something.” It was in ... Especially the Lancôme contract lasted very long, lasted for 14 years, and that is unusual.

And I think it had a cumulative impact on making my face so familiar, like Coca-Cola, because generally, especially in fashion, it’s all about change, and consumerism, and the next pretty girl, and the next pretty girl. So, it was unusual that it lasted so long, and it was unprecedented, even the impact.

John Anderson: Right. Do you think it would happen now, that you would get that length of a career, in just the changes in the last 10 years or so?

Isabella Rossellini: See, to me it was always stupefying that I was so successful as a model, especially in the Lancôme ads, and they didn’t attempt to either repeat it or they let me go, I still wonder why. They did hire my daughter lately. I thought it was a good sign.

Nov 5, 2006 3 John Anderson: Well speaking of daughters, David Lynch once said something in an interview, that when he first met you he said, “You could be Ingrid Bergman’s daughter.” And someone said, “You idiot, she is Ingrid Bergman’s daughter.”

Isabella Rossellini: But that happens to me quite a lot, because I look like my mom, and sometimes I catch a cab in ... Well, especially when I was younger, I would catch a cab and the taxi drivers said, “Oh, I thought I was picking up Ingrid Bergman.” It was surprising.

John Anderson: But you never used—

Isabella Rossellini: Once I thought I was Ingrid Bergman. That was the strangest. That was amazing, because when I was growing up, and we were always told, “Oh, you look so much like your mom.” And even my mom and I, we said, “Oh,” we looked at each other in the mirror and said, “Oh, we don’t look ... Our nose is different. This is different.” So, we didn’t think we look that much alike.

Then years later, I once entered into an antiques shop, and I was walking around, and I see a lady that is a little bit like, she didn’t want to share the body language, like she didn’t want to be approached. So, I was trying to be discreet and walk away from her. And as I was just looking at her I said, “She’s elegant, very nice lady. She reminds me so much of my mom, it’s strange.”

And then, it was me. It was a reflection of the mirror. There were these all mirrors in this antiques shop. I didn’t recognize myself, but I thought I looked like Ingrid Bergman myself. And I thought it was strange because people always say, “Oh, you’re so warm.” And I found myself a little bit like that body language of ... Well, I thought, though, that I was ladylike and elegant, but I was pleased about that.

John Anderson: Did you eventually go up and say hello? We were talking about ... I think the issue of morality is a fascinating one for your career, because some of the movies that you’ve made have been—

Isabella Rossellini: Immoral.

John Anderson: No, but ... Well, I didn’t want to say that. I think when this movie came out, the nuns in your old high school held masses for the redemption of your soul, is that true? That’s what I heard. One of the things that’s so fantastic about this clip is how beautiful this movie is. They show everything here on film, and it’s just like a beautiful-looking film.

Isabella Rossellini: That’s Frederick, he’s a huge director of photography.

John Anderson: But what do you ... Maybe you can tell us about Frank, about your rapport.

Isabella Rossellini: Well, Dennis was one of the last actors to be hired, so I didn’t know who was going to be Frank. And then I received a call from David Lynch all excited, he said, “It’s going to be Dennis Hopper. Do you know him?” And I said, “Sure. I know

Nov 5, 2006 4 Dennis Hopper. What happened to him, because we haven’t heard from him in many years?” He said, “Oh, he was just three years in rehab, but he just came out.” Three years in rehab, and he didn’t want to meet.

Actually, we became quite good friends, but my first scene that I played with Dennis is the scene that started here, and then follows into this very ritualized rape. And it was the first scene that I had to shoot with Dennis, and I asked if I could meet him just for breakfast, or just to have a feel. And he came very bored, very hostile. “What do you want? You want to talk about the scene? No, no.” Very difficult, I have to say.

Later on, I thought that he did it to try to re-create a relationship and make me feel uncomfortable, but it was difficult the first scene, first [inaudible]. It was one of the first scenes we had to shoot in the film.

John Anderson: There’s been over the years much discussion about Dorothy Vallens, this character, and what a damaged character she is. I think I recall you having gotten some inspiration for her from that sort of iconic photo from the Vietnam War, of the girl running down the street naked, who had been in a napalm attack. I think everybody knows that picture, right? It’s—

Isabella Rossellini: Yeah. Well, I took that gesture for a scene later on in the film, where I come out of the bush and walk in the streets. David Lynch told me that something happened to him when he was a little boy, and he was coming back from school with his brother, and they saw a lady walking in the streets naked. And they weren’t titilized, or didn’t ... But they started to cry. The two boys started to cry. And he said, “I want to have the same effect. I wanted the Dorothy Vallens walking in the street to be a terrifying image.”

And when he was talking to me, telling me the story, this image of Nic Ut came to mind, because there’s this little girl that walks the street with this complete helplessness in the gesture and everything. And I thought ... I then read the description of the photograph. I thought that she was having things hanging, and I thought it was her clothing. Actually, it was a skin.

And I remember that the gestures seemed so ... And she’s completely naked. It seemed so desperate and helpless, that I took it for Dorothy. Though I wished for a long time too, because I knew that I had to be totally exposed, and for a long time I thought of a different solution where I could protect myself as an actress so that I could cover, but any gesture of covering would give Dorothy a sense of dignity, a sense that she still had a sense of decency, instead she had to be completely broken.

And I think that’s what makes that photo so impactful is that, that gesture shows that she has lost everything. And so I did it, and we were shooting in the street of Wilmington, North Carolina, in the evening. And people came out with their blanket and picnic and [inaudible]. And I called David, and I said, “David, you got to tell them that this is going to be ... They can’t think to do it with their grandmother and their children, they can’t.”

So David went and started to talk to them, and people were already in a sort of a film mood. So people talked and they just listened, but if you listen to a screen, you don’t answer back. So David would say, “Would you please move, because this scene is going to be violent. I’m sure you’re going to be shocking.” Then I went out, same reaction. They didn’t know if it was real, or if it was part of the film, so then we had to do the scene.

Nov 5, 2006 5

The next day the police came and they took away the rights to shoot anymore in the streets for us. We had to shoot only inside the buildings.

John Anderson: Well, other than, other than that scene, it must’ve been a traumatic part to play, I’m guessing.

Isabella Rossellini: Well it wasn’t traumatic to play, because I think that you ... I don’t know. In my experience, when you feel safe, you can be very free for a film. You can risk. In fact, when I read the script, I asked David if I could do all the scenes with him and Kyle MacLachlan,who was in town in New York, just to see if it was in the same wavelength, because I saw Dorothy as a victim, somebody who had had a sort of Stockholm syndrome, and was completely mad.

But I wasn’t sure. If you read the script, maybe she was instead more of a seducer, more of a ... So, I didn’t know. So, we did all the scenes to be clear that that was the person I wanted to play. And then David was very protective and created a very ... See, I don’t know even if you feel threatened, I close up and I become more formal.

But if it is very safe, this is where you can launch yourself and be free, because you always know that if you go too far, the director is not going to edit, or later on if you see in that moment I was doing maybe something that now I repent, he would have the honesty to say, “Well, if you don’t want me to edit that, I won’t.” So, it was a sense of more than comradery, of friendship and trust in the set, that’s why I think we could go so far.

John Anderson: Other than the nuns back in Italy, you must’ve gotten ... The reaction to this film was so extreme when it first came out.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, very, yeah.

John Anderson: It’s tempered a bit over the years, but what kind of ... What did people say to you when they saw this film?

Isabella Rossellini: Well, I have to say that I think that David too has the 10 big fans that follow him, and I didn’t have them. And the people that like the film, and they were more than the 10 usual fans, obviously, said it was a David Lynch film. The people that didn’t like to film seemed to all come to me, because then they said, “Oh, you did it because you want to rebel against your Lancôme image. You did it too because you’re angry at your mother, who was such a Hollywood icon.”

They had all these strange stories attached to it rather, I do a film and each project is separated, I do a project, and then do a project to slam what I’ve done before. So I felt that it was ... And I felt very bad about it, because I felt that coming in with so much baggage of my family, or Lancôme, having been on the cover of this beautiful magazine, I maybe tinted the film somehow.

David didn’t want me first, he wanted Helen Mirren. And I kept on saying, “Helen, you should have said yes, see? And I’ve ruined it, because I came with this baggage of glamorous, beautiful ... The nudity, it was a violent nudity. I saw myself like a butcher, I used to say. I would imagine this cut—

Nov 5, 2006 6 John Anderson: Raw meat.

Isabella Rossellini: ... raw meat that you see. Sometimes you see these animals skinned, and that’s what I wanted the nudity to be. But the people were so used to nudity being titillating and sexy, that they thought I just failed. And then on top of it, I was always representing beauty in a glamorous world. So I thought, “Oh my God, I didn’t.” Because when I accepted to do the film, I didn’t understand that I came with an image, and now I have compromised David Lynch’s artistry.

Because if you had another actress who didn’t have all this, they probably would have understood right away, that she was doing nudity to be scary nudity, and not sexy, glamorous nudity. So I felt bad for quite a while.

John Anderson: Now, it seems to me that that worked in its favor, huh? Ultimately?

Isabella Rossellini: David?

John Anderson: That it was you?

Isabella Rossellini: Oh, it had to. But at that time it was pretty violent a reaction at first.

Isabella Rossellini: A cowboy, yeah, I love him. Strong, silent like a statue, cool, always there.

John Anderson: One of the reasons I wanted to show that clip was because she seems to be the kind of character you could have made a career playing, elegance, gorgeous, kind of continental and—

Isabella Rossellini: But I did, didn’t I?

John Anderson: I know.

Isabella Rossellini: In films, maybe my career is more difficult to find a thread, but in modeling for sure, I did. I did do the sophisticated international lady.

John Anderson: I suppose you need to have seen the entire film to know exactly what’s going on with her, but there’s a lot going on internally. And I think she’s paired up with Ian Holm, who’s kind of the most obnoxious man in the world in this film. And when she’s talking about going west, I presume she’s thinking about going somewhere.

Isabella Rossellini: Well, I imagine the character in Big Night to also be quite an opportunist. Beautiful, all done up, playing the role, and also looking for a man with money. And I imagined her ... In the film she has ... I have the affair with the character played by Stanley Tucci, who has the restaurant who is unsuccessful, and yet ... So, I imagined her to be a manipulator.

Nov 5, 2006 7

A woman of ... She wanted wealth, money, she never thought about working, because she could get the man to work for her, and so that type. And I shaped her a little bit physically after Gina Lollobrigida with the hair and the attitude. Sometimes maybe because I am a model, but often an iconic figure helps, or painting too, some films I did a Frida Kahlo sort of impersonation, or sometimes I need an image in my head of somebody.

For Dorothy Vallens, it was like ... I remember when I was a little girl, I had a little Japanese doll, and he had his hair cut like this, and the eyebrows were painted, and I thought, “Oh, Dorothy Vallens should have this heavy makeup and the wig, because she needs a façade for the world to hide the confusion and the torment that she has inside, she keeps this façade.”

And so, adds the blue eye shadow, the red lipstick, the black hair, everything is perfect like a little doll. And sometime I need this to ... It helps me to create character, to have a style physically, wig ... Maybe because I’m a model, and I understand clothing, and how you create characters with it.

John Anderson: If she were an actress, she would not have appeared in this movie, however, because there was no money, right?

Isabella Rossellini: There was no money, no. Most of the film I do, there’s no money.

John Anderson: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask. You seem to have ... I don’t know, do you feel an obligation, or is it just more interesting to work with these people? How did you get involved with Big Night, because I know it was a kind of a homegrown project, Tony Shalhoub had co-written the script, I believe and Stanley Tucci—

Isabella Rossellini: Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott—

John Anderson: ... and Campbell Scott co-directed it.

Isabella Rossellini: ... co-directed it and wrote it. And I was friendly with Campbell Scott. I don’t know the reason why I make so many unusual films. I think that some of it, it has to do of being Roberto Rossellini’s daughter, so that if somebody comes and say, “I have no money, but I want to make a film,” and there’s something interesting, I don’t even think about money. I say, “Okay, sure, let’s do it.” As it has been the case with Guy Maddin, and also it’s fun.

Sometimes when I do commercial films, I feel a little bit lost. I feel like I never really have a big career, and then I get lost in the strategy of these career moves and what you’re supposed to do. I don’t really have the culture of it. I don’t really ... I know what they mean, but I don’t really truly know what it meant, or how it can apply to ... How can it be applied to me.

And sometimes in commercial films, you have to hit a stereotype because he’s a good person, and bad people, and good people, and your love or not in love, everything is very clear. And I think being a foreigner I have a hard time grabbing it. When I see a Julia Roberts’s film for example, I really admire that it is so pleasant to look at her, and so pleasant the way she tells the story, and yet it’s more of an idea of a person.

Nov 5, 2006 8

I wish that people or girls have to be the Julia Roberts on the screen. How did she make it so simple? I don’t understand it. I always see the complexity, and I always do darkness, because I see life like that, and I think that prevents me from being commercial, I’m too heavy. You know what I mean?

John Anderson: Right.

Isabella Rossellini: But I think that it’s partially because I’m a foreigner, so when I see it, I enjoy it as an audience, but I don’t know how to do it.

John Anderson: Well, have you ever thought that maybe you just didn’t want to waste your time on frivolous movies?

Isabella Rossellini: No, I would have liked the money.

John Anderson: Oh, yeah. Another reason I wanted to show this particular clip is because, you are so elegant in it. And it made me think of when you were a little girl, you were very ill. You had scoliosis, and you had to have major surgery.

Isabella Rossellini: A major surgery and I was sick for about a year and a half too.

John Anderson: Yeah, and it sounded like quite the ordeal, and yet it worked, apparently.

Isabella Rossellini: It worked, yes. Yeah, I was sick. I had a scoliosis that could be not very severe, but in my case it was quite severe, so they ... I had the fusion of 13 vertebrae, so I’m completely rigid. The people say that I’m regal, but there is a reason for it, I can’t bend, but it has given me a regal reputation.

John Anderson: Oh, I see. Okay. So I did it ass backwards basically is what I—

Isabella Rossellini: You were fooled.

Isabella Rossellini: We have lived together for 16 years. They have been great.

Jeff Bridges: Not always.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, always. They have always been great for me, even when I hate you. I know I love you.

John Anderson: That is from Fearless, directed by Peter Weir, where your character, Laura Klein, is the wife of Jeff Bridges who has survived the plane crash and has come away from it slightly altered, I suppose we can say. It’s one of the more

Nov 5, 2006 9 conventional roles you’ve done, but it’s a woman of ... She’s a woman of a lot of control, I think. What was this like, making this [crosstalk]?

Isabella Rossellini: Well, she was the wife. And already when you play ... Always when you play the wife, it’s always boring. It’s always the mistress, the whore, that’s always fun regardless. But Peter, and obviously the big role in that film was the one that Rosie Perez played, a dramatic role, that she won an Academy Award nomination for it.

But Peter gave me a direction, and it’s interesting how a director to have to ... It’s helpful when director create an image in your head of the character you have to play, rather than give you a literal, you come in and, or do this gesture, walk over there, that it’s almost ... You become like a robot. And he said to me, “Play her like a tango. No, play it like a ... Not a tango, like a flamenco,” he said.

And to me, that meant so much because I know that she had to be fiery, but all controlled. You know how it is, the flamenco, it’s all very fiery and very strong, but very controlled always. And that to me was that image like Gina Lollobrigida, or the photo of Nic Ut. It was an image that I could play this woman very attached to her family, very willing to make the marriage survive, in love with her husband, but not sentimentally in love with ... Not sentimental about it, brutally.

And there she is, and it was wonderful that image of flamenco, for me.

John Anderson: Yeah. Well knowing the film, it makes perfect sense that you say that.

Isabella Rossellini: It makes sense, doesn’t it?

John Anderson: Yeah, it does. There’s so much going on internally with her, and it reminds me of something we were talking about actually just before about, when you worked for Richard Avedon, or worked with Richard Avedon, and you said that he could tell the changes that were going on in your mind, not necessarily what you were thinking, but whether you—

Isabella Rossellini: I know. It was extraordinary. I remember posing in front of the camera. First of all, a lot of photographers, they just take a lot of photographs. They have just ... And then they do editing, not Richard Avedon. Richard Avedon knew you were already done up, he’d put you in front of the camera and he would say … the camera is here, and he’s not behind the camera. He’s next to it and watching it, waiting for you to do something.

And then very quickly, it almost felt like a fisherman catching the fish, “Bang.” He would take the photo, and then he’d wait for you to have another expression that he liked. It was really wonderful, and I remember he was also incredibly articulated. So he said to me, modeling is not a big art, like being a painter or being a sculptor ... But it is a little bit art. It’s like being a good embroider or something like that. But it’s true, it’s not a big art, but you still need to do something.

You can’t just be beautiful and be in front of the camera and wait, you’ve got to do something. And he said to me, “I photograph emotions, and I photograph thoughts, so you have to have a thought.” And he waited for me to have my

Nov 5, 2006 10 thought. So, I start thinking of something, and then he would say, “I don’t like that thought, think of something else.” Click, he would take the photo.

And then at a certain point when he was giving me this direction I said, “I want to go back to the thought he told me not to have. I want to see if he can see it because he seems so acute.” It’s true that I always noticed that he shot the ... The flash went on when my mind slightly got distracted, because of the thought took over. And he seemed to always know that instant, because maybe it’s when my eyes or my expression looked fully concentrated, not that I was still knowing that the camera was there, and part of me was being pretty, and part of me was thinking.

But when the thought distracted me from the rest, that was the flash. It was incredible. So, I went back to the first thought I had, and instantly he said, “No, I told you, no I don’t like that.” When it was his 70th birthday, I sent him a tape. I said, “Since you can read my mind, here it is.” That was my happy birthday. He got it. He said, “Thank you for the happy birthday you sent me.” [inaudible] you would know.

John Anderson: All right. Well, when you made the transition into acting, is that a conscious ... Are you thinking about that when you’re acting? Can you control yourself? Can you control your expression and your thought process in that way?

Isabella Rossellini: No, you don’t. You can’t. I think that’s when ... I would say bad acting comes sometimes ... I remember Jeff Bridges, old fox, said to me ... Because sometimes the directors, they don’t even want you to know what lens to use if you are shot here, or on full length. And Jeff Bridges said, “Without upsetting the director and saying, which lens do you use, or how do you see me? Just go by the monitor and just give it a look.”

Because sometime if you’re small ... If he photographs the room, and you are this big in this, and you are making the saddest expression you can ever, but you are this big, they don’t see it. So you better think like a sculpture. And if you find a position where your body language is a little bit more emphatic of the feeling that you want to express in that long shot, it will be clearer for the audience.

So, it’s not that you always go from the outside ... Most of the time, I work from inside out. I concentrate until the feeling rises, and I don’t know exactly what my hands are doing, what my face does. But occasionally at the beginning of the scene, I would decide that I would sit in a chair in a certain way, or I would enter a room with a certain ... Just to start as a body language, but then I let the emotion carry. I never know. Sometimes a director or the continuity, they say, “Oh, do again what you did with your hands.”

I don’t know what I did with my hands, because it’s the emotion that makes you do it, and you don’t really ... I think if you do it too mechanically, it will come across as too mechanically is. I think there’s two way of acting. One is to just ... We do see a lot of that on television where you really ... Sometimes the actors suggest to the full audience at home, this is going to be funny. There is always a tool. The actress seems to be in the scene, but also with you at home.

And they’re always suggesting to you what they’re trying to do. They’re not quite ... They don’t seem to be quite completely in the scene. I don’t know if makes sense.

John Anderson: Is that like Julia Roberts and the make-believe characters?

Nov 5, 2006 11 Isabella Rossellini: Yeah, sometimes. A lot of stars have that. Even Cary Grant has it generally. He’s not really in the scene just. Half of him is with you and carrying you along, and I don’t know how to do that.

John Anderson: Well, one of the other things that strikes me about Fearless is that it’s more of what I would think of as a serious movie for you, because—

Isabella Rossellini: Yeah, it was very simple, plane crash [crosstalk].

John Anderson: No, but I mean in that sense that you are ... Yeah, not just the plane crash, but what you’re saying about ... Some of the things you’ve done have been tongue in cheek, some have been completely hysterical, extreme. This is more matter-of-fact, and, I’m just guessing, a much more taxing kind of role too, because you’ve got to be ... You’re operating at a certain, different level than you would in Blue Velvet or Wild at Heart.

Isabella Rossellini: Yeah. And Peter is a very severe director, he can catch any moment where you’re not concentrated or you’re faking it or it isn’t clear to you what the scene is or how do you go from this feeling to the other and you cover it up. He instantly catches you, but it was wonderful to work with him. I felt, if you are very much ... Very well into the scene and understand it, and Peter allowed a lot of rehearsal and improvisation with the actors. We improvised. Jeff and I, we improvised in front of Peter, lots of our scenes, without using the dialogue that was written.

But repeating the ... Like if we had a couple fight we would do an hour of improvisation for Peter of fighting over, why are you not talking to me? What do you mean that you need to see this other woman, because she was in a plane crash with you? What does she have that I don’t have? Why is it that she moves you, and I don’t move you? What about me and the son we have together?

So we would do that argument for an hour for real, and then we would go back to the text. And by then you had really a feeling that the text is just collapsing a synopsis of what you’ve done, but you have all the feeling for. And that there is never a time, directors don’t do it. There is not the tradition of doing it, or they don’t make time, or they don’t have the authority to demand, because producer and everybody else, often you, especially [inaudible] do a lot of small parts, I seldom even see the director.

I see the day I’ll go on the set, I play the scene. I never discuss it with anybody. They assume that if you can read it, you’ll have to know it. I don’t know how. You know the words, but you don’t really know exactly the tone, very little repetition, very little rehearsal. So, it was delightful to work with Peter. There was a scene where Jeff Bridges walks on the roof of a building, and it looks like he may want to commit suicide, or fly, or he’s hallucinating.

And me playing the wife arrives on the roofs and sees him there, and I call him back. We played the scene several times, and one time I played it, “Oh, my God, he’s wanting to commit suicide.” So I was very protective, very maternal, very worried, but on the other hand, very protective. And then one of the scene, and I think Peter edited, I come, I call him, I grab him, he comes back, and I slap him, and it wasn’t planned.

I think Peter chose, took that ... There is many reactions that are correct emotionally. And this one to slap him with the

Nov 5, 2006 12 anger, what the fuck are you doing? Seemed also correct. And the director chooses. You give them hopefully many choices, and all of them are right, because emotions, they are irrational. So, you have to have them with you, and then let them lead you wherever.

John Anderson: So, this scene followed an hour of improv?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes.

John Anderson: There’s an interesting thing happens here for those who know the movie, your sympathies shift in this scene from Jeff Bridges, who’s the ostensible hero of the film, to you. And I don’t know if this was a matter of discussion, but he almost seems to help you with his facial ... He’s got a strange smirk on his face, and the whole weight of the film ... You become the sympathetic character rather than he, and he starts to begin to look selfish. Was it anything you discussed or?

Isabella Rossellini: No, but Peter is highly intelligent, and he wouldn’t let any ... He likes the challenge of many minds at the full potential. So, we also extensively as we were doing the scene and we were improvising on Saturday and Sunday, we will do the improvisation with Peter and a writer, and they would occasionally take things out of our improvisation to fine tune, or maybe just make it more ... I never had difficulty saying, because English is not my first language, Peter’s ear is so tuned in that he will always rewrite to make it so that it was my word, that I could feel comfortable.

Some directors or writer are very attached to their words, and they become words that I would say for the first time, and you always see that hesitation, or a phrasing that it will be too American for a foreigner, we would phrase it differently. So, they did all that, so, all that was tremendously helpful to become the character. And I think this shift of sympathy as it goes from Jeff Bridges to me, I think it’s all Peter, because it’s the complexity of life, and he certain doesn’t shy away from it.

And the complexity of life is always where is the right and the wrong and we wish to know, we’d love to know.

John Anderson: No. I think anyone who’s been in a relationship can recognize this conversation. It doesn’t have to be this subject matter. It doesn’t have to involve a plane crash, but it could be something.

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, right.

John Anderson: You mentioned that you said other directors. Can you perhaps discuss some of the other directors you’ve worked with whose clips we’re not showing tonight?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes. Well, I think the one that I felt just most comfortable with was John Schlesinger. He was so paternal and so protective, and I’d never really thought until I worked with John that I was an actress. It was the same year that I’ve done Fearless. I think I’ve done John’s film, and then I went to do Fearless.

Nov 5, 2006 13 John Anderson: And the film was for?

Isabella Rossellini: It was called The Innocent. And that’s how I met Campbell Scott, and then did Big Night with Campbell, he called me. When you travel, they give you this landing card where you have to describe who you are. And when I was a model, I always wrote “student” because I said, “A model? I’m not a model.” I never felt so beautiful, though I did have the cover of Vogue and all that. I don’t know, but it was always embarrassing to me.

Then when I became an actress, I wrote “model” because I felt more of a model than an actress. But it was after working with John Schlesinger that I had the courage to write “actress,” because he was the only one who gave me the feeling that he didn’t need me. He could hire anybody. Anybody would want to work with him, and I felt chosen. And probably all the other actors or director chose me, and I know that was never imposed.

But there was a sense of trust, a sense of ... It gave me confidence that I didn’t have before. So from John on, now when I’m asked, “What do you do?” I say, “Actress.” Very simply like that.

John Anderson: Well, do you feel that some directors have asked you to work with them because of who you are, or what you can bring even financially to a project?

Isabella Rossellini: There is always a little bit of that. Yes, there is always that aspect, because the financial aspect of every film is so difficult, even a film that it’s not ... That is the great tragedy of cinema, I think. I don’t know painting or sculpture that much, but I would imagine that you just need a canvas and colors, or you may just need a paper and a pen. But in films you need money because it’s not enough, you need actors, you need music, you need cinematographer, costume designer.

That even the smallest idea, it’s half a million. The smallest budget you can imagine, it could be half ... Even the little film that I did, My Dad Is 100 Years Old, it was $100,000, $100,000. It’s amazing how expensive it is, cinema.

John Anderson: Guy Maddin making a $100,000 movie, that’s funny, because he always seems ... His aesthetic seems to be to make things look as inexpensive as possible.

Isabella Rossellini: As possible, yeah.

John Anderson: Right, right.

Isabella Rossellini: No. But films, we didn’t earn much money. I didn’t get paid. I didn’t want to get paid, but—

John Anderson: For your film?

Nov 5, 2006 14 Isabella Rossellini: Yes, for my film. But just, film cost money, just so many people, location to the labs, the post-production. Film is always expensive, so there is ... I think more than any other art suffers from ... Is torn between commerce and art, you feel it more in film. So, I do think that I’m often hired, whether I can bring some little money from Europe or a big package with a group of people.

John Anderson: Well, it’s a trend in independent film that they seem they need a well-known name to get off the ground. I wonder what your father would have done in the age of digital video.

Isabella Rossellini: Oh, he would have been delighted to ... Because that makes the crew so much lighter, and so many things can be resolved. And we do see it. We do see more and more artists just being freed from crews and from money, and the video art becoming more and more important.

John Anderson: Well, what did Guy shoot your film on?

Isabella Rossellini: Guy generally uses this eight millimeters ... Uses a different format. So, My Dad is 100 Years Old, it was eight-millimeter and video.

John Anderson: Because he told me once that he does all the special effects in the camera, basically.

Isabella Rossellini: Mostly, yes. Mostly.

John Anderson: I forgot to ask you before that, Stomach, who was that anyway?

Isabella Rossellini: Just one is a big pillow, and the last one, where I’m lying on top of my dad, and and in that scene ... And the other one was a guy who had a pizza shop, and ate probably a lot of them, because he had a big stomach. Guy had the courage to ask him, “Would you like to be in a film, but I just need your belly?” And he said yes, and he was delightful, and he got into the part. We shot My Dad Is 100 Years Old in three days, and Isaac was there always with his belly exposed, and he got into the film.

He understood it because I would play my role ... I would play my father’s voice. And at the beginning, he didn’t do anything, and he looked... He would just breathe normally, and I was like, “Yeah, I didn’t know it.” My father has this ... I was talking with a very excited voice, and the stomach must have that tension, so we would talk to Isaac who was pizza place, he wasn’t an actor. By the end of the third day, he was making that belly so expressive, angry, relaxed, sad, he became so expressive, it was great.

John Anderson: He didn’t like make a face around his navel or anything? We’re going to go to another clip now. This is from The Saddest Music in the World, which I just adore this movie. And it has my favorite line, it’s not your line, it’s Maria de Medeiros’s line, “I’m not an American, I’m a nymphomaniac.”

Nov 5, 2006 15 Maria de Medeiros: I’m not an American, I’m a nymphomaniac.

Isabella Rossellini: Listen to the sounds of Winnipeg.

Speaker 6: We will be hosting a world-wide contest to determine which nation’s music truly deserves to be called, the saddest in the world.

Isabella Rossellini: Guy sent the script to my agent, and sent some of the films that he had done before, because he thought I didn’t know him. And in fact, I didn’t know him.

John Anderson: You didn’t, no?

Isabella Rossellini: No, I’d never heard of him. And then the agent by law, because a lot of the people give me a script and say, “We don’t want to give them to your agent, because then your agent wouldn’t show them to you.” But the agent by law has to show everything that comes, that is an offer that he proposes me.” So, he sent all the material home, and I got all this stack of film and a big script, and I read the first page and Guy writes so gothically. I said, “Oh my God, what is that?”

And then I looked in the pile, and there was one film that was six minutes. I said, “Okay, six minutes. I’ll give him six minutes.” So I start with this one, and it was The Heart of The World, that it is absolutely wonderful. It was done for the 25th anniversary of the Toronto Film Festival. And the Toronto Film Festival commissioned four or five Canadian directors to do a small film.

And when I looked at it I said, “I’m going to work with it, this six minutes.” And then the only doubt I had is that maybe it was very crazy. And so, I called him and I said, “I want to meet you. Where is Winnipeg?” Because I didn’t even know. So he said, “Oh, it’s not very far from New York, so you go to Toronto and then there is a connecting flight.”

So I said, “I’ll come and meet you, and then we’ll stay one or two days together to talk about the film, and then I’ll tell you yes or no.” So I went. Winnipeg wasn’t so close. From Toronto, it was straight north. I looked down, the tundra; ice, ice, ice. I arrived in Winnipeg, it was 40 below zero. And when I arrived. already at Toronto when people say, “Oh Miss,” because they could recognize me, “Miss Rossellini, where do you go?” I said, “Oh, Winnipeg.” “Oh, really? Oh, poor you.”

And I thought, “That was a strange react.” And so when I arrived, Guy was waiting for me. And we were at the luggage waiting for my bag to arrive. And Guy is a chit-chat started to say, “It’s so cold in Winnipeg that when my grandfather died in November, we had to wait until March before we could bury him. Then there was a flood. So we buried him, and the flood came and the river took him down three or four miles, so we had to take the body and bring him back. By then he was a nine-months-old body, and we had to bury him again.” And that was this chit-chat.

And I thought, “I’m going to work with him. This is going to be fun.” So, I did stay another day or two to watch film, and prepare the character, but I already decided waiting for the luggage that I was going to work with Guy.

Nov 5, 2006 16 John Anderson: Well, you shot this in ungodly weather, right? Wasn’t it—

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, it was really—

John Anderson: ... the whole time?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes. We shoot inside a hangar where they build bridges. It was huge, because of the weather, because we had to have some control, so they shoveled all this snow in, and they built this huge set, but it became like a refrigerator. It was sometime colder inside the set than outside, because sometimes the temperature with a little bit of sun would rise. So, always outside it was only 40, and then inside, I don’t know, it was 50 below. It was very cold.

Maria de Medeiros fainted several times, but me, good Swede, I didn’t.

John Anderson: Ah, right.

Isabella Rossellini: I felt because she was Portuguese, I was Swedish, I felt very competitive over who was going to stand.

John Anderson: Can we take some questions at this point?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes, sure.

John Anderson: I think we should. I might have to lift the lights a little, and there are microphones going around. And I guess I’ll just point at someone if I can see. How about this gentleman on the aisle here?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes?

Speaker 7: I wanted to know if when you were a child, if you had any contact with Anna Magnani, because your father ostensibly made her a star, but their relationship I would imagine was very tumultuous, and she was very volatile, and I was just wondering if your mother would not allow her to be around you.

Isabella Rossellini: Well, Anna Magnani was very hurt when father left her to be with my mom, so they weren’t friendly. Though mother was always very reconciliatory, and always spoke to her very highly. But I don’t remember them together. I remember visiting Anna Magnani with my dad, but being very afraid of her. They seemed to be very friendly, but always looking down.

In fact, I’ve written a scene that that was not done in my film, where I do visit Anna Magnani, and I just see the feet. And there were these very pink slippers she had with a little ... These little feathers. They were very feminine, which I

Nov 5, 2006 17 didn’t expect her to have. And then she had a lot of cats and dogs. So, I did have a scene in My Dad Is 100 Years Old, but we cut it. It was just written of Anna Magnani’s feet with all these cats and dog, some of them very deformed, because I think they made love to one another, and so they were a generation of cats afterwards, they were all shriveled.

We had that scene, but it was cut. In my head, my personal memory of Anna Magnani was that. And then when Anna died, she was buried in our ... We have a family crypt in Rome, and Anna had not organized for herself the tomb, so she was buried. Now her son took her away, but for many years she stayed in our family crypt. And my aunt ... That also gave me a sense of Anna Magnani relationship with other members of the family besides my father.

My aunt said ... One day we went to clean the crypt, she said, “Anna, she was pushy alive, and she’s pushy when she’s dead.” She was taking the place of one of the Rossellini without being one.

John Anderson: Yes sir?

Speaker 8: I’m wondering why you choose to live in the United States, because you could live in Italy, or Sweden [inaudible] extent. What do you like about the United States and what [crosstalk]?

Isabella Rossellini: I’m going to answer something that is so conventional that you’d say, “Oh, she’s bullshitting us.” Freedom. Freedom. There is a freedom in United States. And no, I come from Italy, it’s a democratic free country. But there is a social control that is much higher, there is the bella figura it’s called in Italy, it’s to impress your neighbor. And to impress your neighbor, you can’t do this. What would the neighbor think? You wouldn’t believe it, how heavy it is.

And here everything is light, and everything is a possibility, and people understand experiment. And though you want to be successful in America, because it’s all about being successful and making money, but you are allowed to try and fail. And if you fail, that’s it. You start another one. In Europe, it’s a tragedy. You do a film that is bad, or you do something that is a failure, and it’s such a stigma.

And I think that’s why I remained. I could be playful, I could be experimental ... I can be playful. I don’t even ... No one would think I do art, I just play. When something is intriguing and interesting, I’ll do it. And you could do it here, there’s lightness, the lightness of being.

John Anderson: Yes sir?

Speaker 9: In fact, I was intrigued by your [inaudible] with Alfred Hitchcock, who was so influential in your mother’s own career. And I was curious about how you think of your career in comparison to your mother’s when she had this amazing rise to stardom coming from abroad, the exotic international star, and then her fall from grace when she went to live with your father, and the kind of revulsion that she faced in this country.

Isabella Rossellini: Well, I didn’t live through it because I was too little. And it was my brother who was older than I, two years was the child of the scandal. My mother in 19 … she was just a big Hollywood star, big box office draw, and she saw some of my

Nov 5, 2006 18 father’s film that came from Italy, Open City and Paisan. And by the time she saw the second film, Paisan, she decided she was going to write my father a letter wanting to work with him, because she thought, “If I could bring my fame, my popularity, to an incredible director that lives in this poor, bombed Italy and give him a chance, it would be fantastic.”

They fell in love, and my mother was married. By the time my father and mother did their first film, Stromboli, my mother became pregnant whilst she was still married, so this was a huge scandal in the United States. And she became persona non grata, and she was not allowed to come back. I wish she was allowed, but even the Senate took a stand against her, because the Senate has always had ... In America, there’s always this problem that still exists of ... I have a problem with it.

I’m not dismissing the problem of morality in films, and how much do you influence? What is your moral responsibility as an actor? And I have to say that I have always heard something that it is a double standard. That it’s hard for me also to accept, though I’m completely against censorship. But that is, I would never understood why I would make a 30-second commercial, knowing that I would influence people to buy a cream, and then you do a two-hour movie and then they say, “Oh no, the audience understand that you can murder people, but they understand there’s no influence on them.

I could never understood this double standard. Anyway, Hollywood at the time was concerned about actors in general, because actor would become so famous, and there would be so influential on the new generation that they became icons and role models, and there was no checking on the actor’s morality or background as you do for politician, or you do for a big executive and CEO [crosstalk].

And so, there was an attempt at the time to ask the studio that if she saw a rising star, to check and make sure that they deserved to become star, because the star also would carry a social responsibility. So, is that person ready to deal with that? And so, my mom became the example of somebody who hadn’t been checked, and was completely immoral, and is a foreigner. And here we have now, Ingrid Bergman, who’s going to bring bigamy to America, and fans will follow her.

I think that was the logic of this great attack, and that’s why the Senate took a stand in trying to promote a law that would screen actors, and studios would decide, this one has a potential to be a star, but doesn’t have the moral standing to be. So, that was the case. I don’t know that Hitchcock ... Actually later on when after I’ve done this film, I showed my films to Charlotte Chandler who’s a fantastic writer, writes wonderful biography of several directors, and she wrote one about Hitchcock.

And she said, “Oh, Hitchcock loved your father’s film.” I said, “Really? I thought he never did.” First of all, stylistically, but then I saw my mother’s archive that we kept at Wesleyan University, that he would write letters to her saying, “Oh, come back to Hollywood. This is where you belong. You just had a crush on Roberto Rossellini, snap out of it.” And so I assumed that he didn’t like my father’s work, but apparently according to Charlotte, Hitchcock did like my father’s work, but he didn’t like the fact that he took Ingrid Bergman away from him.

Speaker 10: That saved me the effort of coming here tonight.

Isabella Rossellini: Ah, that’s good.

Nov 5, 2006 19 Speaker 10: Grazie mille for coming here tonight. I am very impressed with the results you’d get from improvisation before shooting the scenes, you mentioned earlier about freedom in America, and I hope that you had freedom with your directors. And I just wonder what do you prefer: working from a script, or taking the time to improvise and work with other actors to get [crosstalk]?

Isabella Rossellini: No, no. I don’t think it’s pos ... Well, it’s possible to do a little bit of improvisation, but you can’t really do any improvisation because a scene in a film is about a minute or two minutes, but in life it’s a synthesis, because if you take a fight between husband and wife, maybe the argument is an hour long, but the scene is a minute. But you have the impression as do your audience that you’ve been participating for an hour.

So the great mastery of the writers is to collapse into a synthesis that is a minute long, but you understand. So which is the key sentence? Which is the key things? It’s really extraordinary. So, when you decompose that, and I think that the improvisation and the rehearsal, it’s great to do before, so that you understand it fully what’s behind every word, and you take the synthesis of the minute-scene and you re-enlarge it, so that you know exactly what you saying, and what you’re doing.

But I don’t think you can really improvise in front of ... Sometimes you do, but if you improvise in front of the camera, you have these scenes involved, and they’re shapeless and they go ... And they’re very boring to watch, because there’s too many words, and you repeat yourself. No, no, it has to be just an exercise that you do with the actors.

There’s another exercise that I love a lot with actors, and it’s to reverse the role, so that I would take for example Jeff Bridges’s role, and Jeff Bridges takes my role, and then we would run lines, because you would see the other person point of view. So, anything that makes you understand really the many, many, many layers, then you can do the same thing as your writer did. Find a synthesis in a gesture, or in an emotion, or the leap, but you have to have the full information.

Speaker 11: Thank you. Again, I can’t believe that I’m making a question to Ms. Isabella Rossellini. As you said, it’s like one of the 10 person ... 10 people to fall under David Lynch. And before you took that part as maybe you know that these are the invitations, and there are industries, and there are his movies. How did you get that part, and why did you take that part?

Isabella Rossellini: All right. The Blue Velvet part?

Speaker 11: Yes, Blue Velvet.

Isabella Rossellini: David, he did Elephant Man, and that was the only film I’d seen of David Lynch at the time. He had also done after Elephant Man, he did Dune. I think it came out Dune, but he was not successful. And then when I received the script of Blue Velvet, I went to see Eraserhead, and I was very surprised by Eraserhead, because it was so radically different than ... I didn’t see Dune, but Elephant Man was so poetic and so classic in a way, and David could be so avant-garde.

He wanted Helen Mirren as I said before, and I had just done a film called White Knights with Helen Mirren about ballet,

Nov 5, 2006 20 with Misha Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. And I went to dinner with a relative of Dino De Laurentiis, and David Lynch was eating in the same restaurant with another relative of Dino De Laurentiis. So the relative said hello, and we were introduced, and then we sat down at their table to have a drink.

And David, that’s where he said, “You could be Ingrid Bergman daughter.” Then he was answered, “You’re an idiot. She is.” And then he said, “Are you an actress too?” And I said, “Yes. I just finished a film with Baryshnikov and Helen Mirren.” And he said, “I want Helen Mirren for my film. Can you convince her to do it? I sent her the script and she turned it down. Can you talk to her and tell her to do it?” And I said, “Well, maybe. I don’t know.” I was a little bit lost. Then that was the end of the evening.

And then the next day he sent me the script through his casting agent saying, “Afterwards, I thought that maybe you would want to read for the part.” And so I did say I would ... I read the script, I liked it immediately. And strangely enough, as strange as Blue Velvet is, when I read the script, I understood. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the film. It was just surreal as it was there. Everything was already in the page.

But I did ask him to play and rehearse, to test every scene because it required nudity, she was obviously a sadomasochist coming from ... This was my interpretation that she had Stockholm syndrome, but I wasn’t sure. And I think other actresses said to me, they tested for the part, they said that they played it more like a whorey, more, yes, maybe disturbed inside, but actually using sex to control. Instead for me, it was more of a torment.

Anyway, David did like my interpretation and offered me the part. But it was also important for me while he was testing me, that this is the way I want it to play, because I never really wanted ... I never thought I would be nude in a film. My mom said no many times. And my family, it was very difficult for me to take my clothes off in a film.

So, it was important for my moral standard, and it wasn’t titillating nudity, but it wasn’t a nudity ... I didn’t know how to express it in any other way. Otherwise, we would have avoided nudity, but it had to be this ... When it was this brutal rape, I felt that nudity would show it the best, and I agreed with David on that.

Speaker 12: I appreciate that you took that part.

Isabella Rossellini: Thank you.

Speaker 12: You were in that part, and then the movie was ... I think it’s more rich, and more actually weird.

Isabella Rossellini: Thanks for that. But I think David said that he’s inspired, but what he doesn’t understand by the mystery, and I am also inspired by the mystery, and often films feel that they have to tell a story. Narratively you have to have a conclusion, a happy end or a sad ending. And instead, I understood that you can play the mystery, you can play it and not understand it. Actually, the director that gave me the best answer about this one, it was Bob Wilson, Robert Wilson, the theater director.

He sent me a script to work with me, and I read it and didn’t understand anything. It came from a book or [inaudible] I

Nov 5, 2006 21 read the book, didn’t understand anything. I was so sad, because I always wanted to work with Bob Wilson. So, I called him up and I said, “Oh, Bob, I feel so bad because I want to work with you so, so much, but I don’t know that I could do this part, because I don’t understand any of it. And I tried to read it over and over again.”

And he said, “Oh, me too. I don’t understand it either.” And I said, “You don’t?” And he said, “Well, if I understand it, why do it?” But in a way, it’s completely liberating. It’s true. They are not there to tell you a story, to teach you a lesson. They’re there to dive in what they don’t understand. And David does it too.

And to me, it’s a great trip that you could take into the mystery. It’s not the most commercial, but it is valid. Life is more mysterious to me than understandable.

Speaker 13: It’s a fact that actors give three performances: the one they prepare, the one that’s given to the public, and maybe the most important one of all, the third one, the actor gives to him or herself in front of the mirror in the dressing room or later on. Is there a memory of that last thought of a performance that you would have liked to have done over, or you would have thought that there was something you could have done differently, that would have made a different impact, and made the film something more than what it actually turned out to be?

Isabella Rossellini: Blue Velvet or any film?

Speaker 13: Any film, but if there’s one in particular that you would like to tell us?

Isabella Rossellini: Well, I have to say that I never really watch my film that much. I see them when they come out, or generally on private screenings, some of it just to see what they edit. There’s always something that gets cut out, a scene altogether. I like to hear it with the music, I like to hear the other scene that I wasn’t involved, what they looked like.

And generally the first time I see a film, I’m very distracted by all these new elements and I wasn’t there. And then I have to see it a second time to see the film, and that’s it. Then I never really watched them again. I found it very sad. When I watched Blue Velvet, I think of the days we were in Wilmington, and I get nostalgic of the time I’ve spent, or memory come back, so, I never really watch my films.

And I also think that there is a certain point where, when you watch a film there is always something that you say, “Oh, I should have done a little bit more. I should have done this. We could have made that clearer.” I don’t know. So you are full of pentimentos, and wishing to have done better. So, maybe also it’s the reason why I don’t really watch them, because there’s always something I want to change. It’s too late.

John Anderson: Does somebody have the mic? Oh, okay.

Speaker 14: It is wonderful hearing you talk as articulately about the work and about how you work. Did you learn about acting at your mother’s knee, or did you have specific training as you got older?

Nov 5, 2006 22 John Anderson: No, I didn’t. My mum once only told me one thing that at first shocked me, and then as I became a more experienced actress, I thought, “Only a very, very good actress could have given me this advice.” It was my first film and my mom said, “When in doubt, do nothing, because there will always be the violins.” She was completely right. When in doubt, do nothing, because the scene, the light will carry.

But if you give too much emotions, then you go. And the emotion is the incorrect one, then the violins cannot carry you. So, she was really great, because sometimes when you do a film there is always one close-up, one little twist that you don’t know how to play, or it’s unclear, or a bit in the synthesis that the writers do.

Sometimes there is a beat that maybe is missing from the writer, and that you have to cover up as an actor. So, it’s best to do nothing and just let it glide. Glide with the other element that would come to form the film. But no, I wished I was able to work with both my father and mother, because my father must’ve had a lot of tricks up his sleeves.

Having not worked with any actor, besides Anna Magnani and my mom, he believed that if you need a fisherman, you’re better off hiring a fisherman, because you would know how to do the netting, and do the gestures that are right, and his face will look sunburned, and his hands would be of a fishermen. And let me guess, he wouldn’t know the lines, but it didn’t matter in Europe, not in America, not in Anglo-Saxon countries, but the rest of the world, the films are dubbed.

So, people are not used as you are in America to synchronize lips and words. It’s really an Anglo-Saxon thing. So, he would then give words to the people, so they didn’t matter that they didn’t know their lines very well. Somebody else would fill in the words for them, but he had the authenticity of the faces. He never thought that Cary Grant, no matter how we get our best makeup artists, no matter how much he tried to be in the part, he would have never looked like a fisherman, he will always look like Cary Grant doing the fisherman.

So, he’s saw very strongly that artificiality. So, I wished I would have worked with my dad to just see how he blend actor and nonfactor, what was it? I would have loved to learn more from that, but unfortunately Dad died when I was in my 20s, so I never really had the opportunity to work with them. I learned by doing it. I had a very helpful coach called Sandra Seacat who was a very known coach, and she was very helpful at making me understand what was acting.

It was a little bit of a mystery to me. I always wanted to direct secretly, but I never knew how do you direct an actor? And then people asked me to act because I was a model, so I was hesitant. At first, I didn’t want to do it because my mother was so famous. And then I thought, “Oh, that’s a stupid attitude. Let’s do it.” See America, freedom. Let’s do it, and I’d learn. I would learn. And then I liked it more than I thought.

I never became a director. I just the wrote My Dad Is 100 Years Old, and now I’m writing something else, we’ll see when it gets done.

Speaker 15: We’ve got time for one more.

Nov 5, 2006 23 John Anderson: Well, there’s one down here and there. Four in on the second row ... Nope, the first one.

Speaker 16: I’m going to ask you what it was like working with Norman Mailer and Abel Ferrara, and also your performance in The Saddest Music in the World is so wonderful. I wonder if you’re planning anything else with Guy Maddin.

Isabella Rossellini: Guy and I, we love working together. And so we are always thinking of what else we could do to be together. We became quite good friends. We always email. We call each other, spend little holidays together. He comes to New York, we go see museums and films and art. So, we will seek for a project just for the pleasure of being together.

I have to say that I enjoyed working with the same directors, because there is a familiarity, and you get the shorthand. I think that I envy the old theater companies where they were always together, because there is something to be said about knowing each other, and working a lot together. And I did have a little bit of collaboration with Campbell Scott or David Lynch that was more than one film. It makes a very big difference.

Abel Ferrara and Norman Mailer: Abel Ferrara’s crazy, insane, incredibly talented. And I don’t even know how he makes these film that are not rational, but ... A lot of the film that I’ve done with him, I loved The Funeral, and it was pretty rational, and it was a fantastic script. The confusion in the set was astounding. I never knew if the camera was on or off. The confusion was so great, you didn’t even hear action, and yet the film was so wonderful.

It’s incredible how it works. And Norman Mailer, I didn’t understand the film until I saw it. When I did Blue Velvet, there was this big scandal. And I was asked ... I was with the ICM, that was my mother’s agency. But then there was a whole new agency, so there was no really ... I wasn’t under ICM, because my mother was with ICM who was a big agency, everything was new. But still I was very happy to be in a very big agency.

And when I did Blue Velvet, the agency was so angry at me, because I’d done it ... I don’t know. I don’t know. They weren’t involved or I don’t know. Often I do films, I let my agent know, but they don’t really want you to make films where there is no money, so they sometimes don’t even ... You have to make the deal yourself and all that. So, Blue Velvet must’ve been one of those. And so, they basically asked me to leave the agency.

And so there I was with Lancôme wanting to fire me, the nuns giving masses, big acting agency asking me to leave. This was only my second film in America; I’d just done one film. So I thought, “That was it.” I was so desperate, I had a two-year-old baby. I said, “Oh my God, what will I do? How I’m I going to pay my bills?” I was really desperate.

And he came great Tom Luddy. We were talking about him because he did organize just the Telluride Film Festival, and he produced film, and he was producing the film with Norman Mailer. And he called me and he said, “Do you want to do a film with us?” So, I felt that it was really rescuing me, giving me a sense of confidence.

And I did the film, but I didn’t understand it until I saw it, because I didn’t understand that Norman Mailer, who really saw people as devilish. All my life, I heard that you have to be compassionate, that people ultimately are good, that there is goodness in everybody. And I was young, and I still believed in it.

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Norman just thinks the opposite. He thinks the devil is in everybody, and this is a jungle and we are all surviving, and we’re all opportunistic. But I didn’t understand it, because I didn’t understand that philosophy. So when I did the film, I didn’t capture it. I don’t know that I did a very good job until I saw the film. And I actually thought the film was wonderful. It was the most unsuccessful film, probably that I’ve ever done. But there was this conviction that people are devil at the base.

The common denominator is that we are wolves, we are opportunistic. It was such a ferocious statement. So, it was a great lesson. But I have to say, I was very grateful to be able to have people so known and so important to come and rescue me. It was great.

John Anderson: How many people can say they were directed by Norman Mailer?

Isabella Rossellini: Yes.

John Anderson: Well, our great thanks to Isabella Rossellini.

Isabella Rossellini: Thank you. Thank you so much.

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