Top 45 Isabella Rossellini Quotes

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.

I’ve had a lot of ‘aha’ moments, but the big ‘aha’ about growing older is the mental freedom.

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.

Mammals are very close to us, but bugs are strange. They’re more mysterious and exotic.

The first time I went to Hollywood, I was 25 years old. My background was mostly Italian.

I’m always a little worried when people have met me in person because I’m worried they’ll be disappointed.

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.

I didn’t want to become an actress because the competition with my mother would have been to much to live up to.

When David left me I became totally brokenhearted.

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.’

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.

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 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.

A lot of the advertisement is done by saying: first of all, have a complex about who you are.

The reason of my life is not to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

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.’

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.

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.

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.

My perfume, Manifesto, was based on the scent of basil.

But I don’t really see myself as a role model. I’m not a dictator, or someone who wants to be adored!

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.’

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.

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 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.’

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.

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.

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.

Although Dorothy in Blue Velvet was humiliated and hurt by men, basically I could react to how she felt.

It always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object.

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.

My films are comical films. They are made to laugh at. They are comical – and scientifically correct.

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.

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.

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’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 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.

It’s a new business for me to be a filmmaker.

I am now at an age when they wanted me to play her mother.

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.

True elegance for me is the manifestation of an independent mind.

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.

There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.

I would like to be forgotten. What’s so good about being remembered?

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.