Quotes from Isabella Rossellini

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 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.

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.'

I seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.

I always dreamed when I was a little girl interested in animals that I would go live in Africa. Then I found out that you can look in your backyard, and you can do your own safari.

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

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

I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Everybody in my family was in films, and they succeeded so much, I thought, 'It's better for me to do something else,' and they agreed.

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.

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

I was born with a love of animals, the same way I was born with brown hair. When I was a little girl in Rome, I always had pets, which I adored.

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.

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.

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

These same people seem to forget that mother also took a lot of chances with the type of roles she played.

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

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.

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

My father used to say that you could only access culture before cinema by learning to read and write, but that once cinema was invented, knowledge was available to anybody.

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.

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

I think I was always interested in animals. If a man likes a woman, you know, he might discuss business, but there's a part of his brain that is looking at the girl coming in and checking the girls. I do the same with animals.

Animation translates well to a small screen. When you look at Walt Disney or Chuck Jones - you know, Bugs Bunny - there really isn't any difference if you watch on a very big screen or a computer screen.