Isabella Rossellini Revisits and Revises Her Past Interview Covers

In 1978, the first time Isabella Rossellini appeared on the cover of this magazine Andy Warhol and Catherine Guinness wanted to know why she hadn’t yet followed in the footsteps of her movie star mother, Ingrid Bergman. “I was scared,” the then-journalist told them. Ten years later, when Isabella made her second Interview cover, she was a cultural sensation and had starred in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, a sign of the fearlessness that would define her acting career. Looking back on it all now, Isabella has a few things to clear up.

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1978

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ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: When I started to model, acting felt like a natural evolution. Richard Avedon, with whom I shot some Vogue covers, told me, ‘You know, Isabella, you are acting, because models are a bit like silent movie stars. I’m not photographing a beautiful nose, I’m photographing emotion. So you’re already doing it.’ That encouraged me to try acting several years later.

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ROSSELLINI: I wouldn’t say that now, of course.

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ROSSELLINI: I do have many animals now. So see? I’m faithful.

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ROSSELLINI: I was lucky to be born in a period where a lot of people were interested in animals, but when Robert Redford finally asked me to make a short film series about the environment, I thought, I cannot photograph animals the way David Attenborough does. Those are people that live in a hole in the Arctic for six months waiting for that one bird to go by. So I created Green Porno, but that same curiosity about nature and animals was the base. The way I expressed it was different from the regular documentary format because I couldn’t match what was already on the market, but I could underline what was in my mind, and how much animals amused me.

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ROSSELLINI: New York was dangerous then. I was surprised that they gave you instructions on how to walk in the street. We were recommended not to walk along Central Park West. My sister lived there, and she would say, ‘If you go out, don’t walk on the sidewalk bordering the park, because people can grab you and pull you in.’

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ROSSELLINI: We have a little art house cinema called Plaza, where I go regularly. I even rent the place to do screenings. I rented it for four consecutive weekends and we did all Charlie Chaplin movies. It was really meant for children, and it was moving to see these films that are 100 years old, and children getting it. And now we just stream more. I wake up very early in the morning and I watch a film with my cappuccino.

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1988

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ROSSELLINI: When I was a little girl in Europe, the diplomatic language was French, so a lot of people spoke it. But Mama wanted very much for me to learn English. She felt that it was the language of the future, and she was right.

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ROSSELLINI: It was tough, because you’re always chosen. Nowadays, I admire actresses like Laura Dern, a good friend of mine, who produces or takes the initiative to buy the rights for a book. Back then it didn’t happen. It happened with the generation that followed me. I saw Mama wishing to act when she was older, so she had to go to the theater. They couldn’t do close-ups anymore because she had wrinkles, god forbid. In the theater, you saw her from far away, so she could play more roles or even play somebody younger than herself. Nowadays, actors and actresses create their own material. Back then you didn’t have much say.

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ROSSELLINI: The filming was incredible. I mean, I also became David’s lover, and Laura [Dern] is still one of my best friends. But when the film came out, the reaction was very negative, and my agent asked me to leave. It was tough, and I didn’t have an agent for many years after that. It was a small independent film, and David Lynch was not as famous as he is today. But I remember David calling me and saying, come to this movie theater close to Bloomingdale’s. He said, ‘There’s a line of people entering the cinema, and the film is Blue Velvet.’ We were around the corner because we were afraid people would see us.

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ROSSELLINI: I should clarify that falling in love is not falling in love like I did for David or Marty [Scorsese]. A director is very much like an orchestra conductor. You have to tune into them. And if they aren’t welcoming you, if they’re intimidating, you cannot really open yourself. So most of them, in different ways, have their own charms.

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ROSSELLINI: When you’re a child, you don’t have a measure of society. The only reality you know is your family. So when I was a little girl, I thought my parents were famous because they were parents. In fact, when I was modeling for Lancôme and all the airports had my photos everywhere, my daughter’s teacher was teaching the students to remember their last name and address, so if they ever got lost, they could identify themselves. When they came to my daughter, the teacher said, ‘Elettra, you are at the airport and you’re lost. What do you do?’ And she said, ‘Stand under my mom’s poster.’

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ROSSELLINI: “My father was ultimately a very Italian father, terribly jealous. So when I started to go out with boys, he went berserk. But I’m going to say something a little bit scandalous. When I had my own children, especially my daughter, and she had her first boyfriend, I really wished that my father had a little bit of a reason in trying so badly to preserve my virginity—losing my virginity was such a drama. Because when my own children reached that age, I became kind of sad. I wished my father was right. But now that I was in his position, I could say, ‘Oh, he was wrong.’

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ROSSELLINI: Now I’m very pleased, not because Mama was a famous actress and I could capitalize on it, but because she’s been dead for over 40 years, and I’m glad to have her genes, and that I can still feel her inside me.

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ROSSELLINI: I knew that it would be more difficult for me to be an actress, because I would be compared to my mom, and there was no way I could be as good as her, for several reasons. First of all, because she’s a myth. She also had many years of experience. And also, you learn to be an actress by acting, and your first film is never as good as your fourth or fifth. So when my second film, Blue Velvet, came out, it was controversial, but I was particularly attacked. Of course, I played a battered woman with a sadomasochistic tendency, so it was a controversial character, but I wondered if the negative attention came because I was the daughter of Ingrid Bergman.

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ROSSELLINI: My father [Roberto Rossellini] was more of an influential director than a box office director. I remember working with James Gray [on Two Lovers] and how much he praised my father. He showed the crew Rome, Open City, and you could see some of them fall asleep.

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ROSSELLINI: When I read the interview, I thought, look how honest I am. Generally, you do an interview to promote the film, and you say, ‘Everything is marvelous.’ I thought, ‘Wow, look at me saying I played that character wrong. Norman [Mailer] was right, and I was wrong.’

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ROSSELLINI: I felt like I couldn’t be a journalist and be married to Marty, because there was so much curiosity about the private lives of stars, so I started to be uncomfortable as a journalist. I felt that if Bob De Niro came to dinner, he had to watch what he was saying, because was he talking to Isabella, Marty’s wife, or was it talking to Isabella, the journalist?

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Hair: Peter Butler using House of Skuff Potion No. 1 at Tracey Mattingly Agency.

Makeup: Matin using Lancôme and Lashify at Tracey Mattingly Agency.

Nails: Yukie Miyakawa using Chanel Le Vernis at See Management.

Fashion Assistant: Ashley Weiler.

Post Production: Studio RM.

Location: Gary’s Loft.

Isabella Rossellini can be seen in Conclave, currently in theaters.