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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Isabella Rossellini Quotes

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

– Isabella Rossellini

But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome.

– Isabella Rossellini

I live in New York, and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage, I feel relief; in our urban environment, other animals are dying out.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.’

– Isabella Rossellini

I became an actress way into my 30s because I thought that I had to find my own way, and that’s why I worked so much in modelling, until I realised that the differences between acting and modelling weren’t that great. I always say that modelling is a little bit like being a silent actress.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– 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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

I like to extend myself as an actress and David really helped me.

– Isabella Rossellini

I have the most fun writing and directing. And I always choose myself as the lead actor.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

To be an icon is a big job – it’s beyond acting. And sometimes it pays, and sometimes it doesn’t.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

If we are completely honest with ourselves, everyone has a dark side to their personalities.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

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

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

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.

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

I am much more radical in my beliefs than my products represent me to be.

– Isabella Rossellini

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.’

– Isabella Rossellini

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

– Isabella Rossellini

There is often a great disparity between a director’s personal style and the movies he makes.

– Isabella Rossellini

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