- Born
- Birth nameIsabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini
- Height5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
- Isabella Rossellini, the Italian actress and model who has made her home in America since 1979 and holds dual Italian and American citizenship, was born cinema royalty when she made her debut on June 18, 1952 in Rome. She is the daughter of two legends, three-time Oscar-winning Swedish-born actress Ingrid Bergman and neo-realist master Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She was also the third wife of Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese from 1979 to 1982 and the partner of legendary director David Lynch.
She made her movie debut in Vincente Minnelli's A Matter of Time (1976), which starred her mother. She then made a couple of Italian pictures and worked as an American correspondent for Italian television network RAI before appearing in Taylor Hackford's Cold War drama White Nights (1985) in 1985. She followed that up with her most memorable role, as the abused chanteuse in Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet (1986), she earned an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She then went on to win a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her performance as Lisle, the mysterious socialite, forever in her youth in Death Becomes Her (1992). In 1997, she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for a guest appearance on Chicago Hope (1994).- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
- SpousesJon Wiedemann(1983 - 1986) (divorced, 1 child)Martin Scorsese(September 29, 1979 - November 1, 1982) (divorced)
- Children
- Parents
- RelativesIsotta Rossellini(Sibling)Pia Lindström(Half Sibling)Renzo Rossellini(Half Sibling)Robertino Rossellini(Sibling)Marco Romano Rossellini(Half Sibling)Nur Rossellini(Half Sibling)
- In 1983, Time magazine reported Rossellini's modeling salary of a then $9,000 a day.
- Dated Gary Oldman in the 1990s. He postponed their planned wedding in order to go to rehab for substance abuse. After meeting another woman in rehab, he called their engagement off.
- She suffered from scoliosis (progressive curvature of the spine) and underwent surgery to correct it. She was in a body cast for a year.
- Fluent in Italian, French and English.
- Considers her time with ex-boyfriend David Lynch as her "most significant relationship".
- If you go to a therapist, they say, 'Are you sure? How do you feel about your wrinkles?' And I say, 'I don't know, because I don't really see them.' I see my hands, but I don't see my face, so it's not a torment. I only see it for five minutes in the morning when I brush my teeth! When you read women's magazines you always read about this drama of getting old, about anti-aging cream and plastic surgery and whatever else. But I think if you're independent, like I have grown to be, it's welcome.
- When I was hot as a model, I always knew my entire schedule for the next eight months in advance, every moment was planned and filled. And this lasted for 10 years!
- There is no question for me about the Electra complex. You know, exaggerated love of the father - I have it, or some version. I loved my mother, but I was my dad's girl.
- There's nothing wrong with modeling, except that it doesn't last. I had the stereotype most people have, that it's stupid, but it wasn't stupid at all. I loved spending a day with Richard Avedon. People who are so artistic, so intelligent -- you are interpreting what they are trying to express. You have taken a trip into this brain, you are a tourist in this fantastically interesting brain. People always say to me that I do such strange films, but it's not that I'm looking for something so different necessarily, it's simply that I meet a person who strikes me as intelligent and interesting and I want to take a trip into their brain.
- I like to see a film where I don't need to look at the titles to know who did it, where one image is enough to say this is David Lynch, this is Alfred Hitchcock, this is Spike Lee.
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