Isabella Rosselini

Interview, Feb, 1996 by David Furnish

DAVID FURNISH: You've just finished being the face of Lancome after fourteen years. What kind of experience was that for you?

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: It was extraordinary, but not necessarily in ways people might assume - that it's so wonderful making a lot of money and leading a so-called glamorous life and being famous for your beauty. The surprising pleasures of this kind of long-term contract, if you stand for a product internationally, come from the endless number of people you encounter around the world. In one day of a public-relations tour, I may have shaken hands and spoken with six or seven hundred people - maybe only for ten seconds each, but because you come as a symbol, those ten seconds are very highly charged. What's remarkable is how in a country like Taiwan or Indonesia, you realize that what you stand for goes way beyond selling mascara - it's the whole capitalist world of the free market. You can see people longing for it, because beauty, luxury, even cosmetics, are linked in their minds with some sort of moral value. People say, "What makes you beautiful is that you're beautiful inside as well as out," which is pure projection! In Taiwan, I've had people genuflect and kiss my hand! It's amazing to me that people can go with a photograph to that extent. They seem so vulnerable when you've become a symbol to them - they don't react to you as a person, as a normal thing. Often at the end of the day I'd feel totally overwhelmed. The only person I could talk to about this was Paloma Picasso, who was promoting her own line and going through the same thing. Both of us would come home and cry - from exhaustion, of course, but also from the experience of having so much emotion directed at you.

DF: How does it feel to be put on a pedestal like that?

IR: That wasn't what moved me. It was becoming the object of so much longing for the kind of life we take for granted here. My view of myself is so different from all that. I live my everyday life as a person and I react to my photos from a certain distance. When I look at a photo, I detach myself and look at it as a product - not as me, Isabella. I'd become so used to looking at things professionally that I wasn't aware of the other side of the images. I didn't realize the impact they had in remote countries with very different realities. Where is the limit to creating a dream that everyone, everywhere, would like to attain? Or an image of something a person can never be?

DF: Tell me about the image you created as Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet. That was a real departure for you.

IR: In Blue Velvet, it was important to me that I had once been fat. That was the only film where I took my clothes off. It was about a battered and sexually abused woman. David Lynch didn't want me to walk down the street in an appealing, sexy way, but in a disturbed way that would frighten you. I chose the gesture from the famous photo of a Vietnamese girl walking away from a napalm bomb. To me it was very important that I convey a sense of abuse, rape, violence - and that I wasn't sexy. So I didn't diet. I didn't care about the way they photographed my body - I wanted to look like a piece of meat. At least women didn't get the feeling that my body was absolutely unattainable. [laughs]

DF: Was it rebellion? Were you thinking that you had been this deified object and you wanted to break that Image?

IR: You know, it always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object. The other day, before going to dinner, I sent a fax to Gary [Oldman] saying, "I've arranged for a makeup artist to come before the party so I can finally be less of an impostor than I generally am." [laughs]

DF: You say that because you don't wear makeup?

IR: I don't really wear much makeup, except during work. I always felt lucky to have been chosen to be a model. I used to joke, "The next best thing to winning the lottery is having a beauty contract."

DF: [laughs] Why?

IR: Because modeling requires a few days' work, but the lottery doesn't take any work at all - so this is the second luckiest way. You know, I always suspect that one day they'll realize I don't really have all that famous beauty and I'll be kicked out of the business. I'm always a little worried when people have to meet me in person because I'm afraid they'll be disappointed.

DF: So you feel it's difficult to live up to your own ideals sometimes?

IR: Yes.

DF: And you tried to destroy that image in Blue Velvet?

IR: No, I did Blue Velvet because I fell in love with the script. I'm going to make a confession: Being Italian meant growing up in an Italian macho environment, and being beautiful and looking foreign to Italians because of my Swedish mother meant I was the victim of a lot of sexual harassment when I was young. So I completely understood the character I played in the movie.

DF: Can being beautiful be a real burden?

IR: To me, it isn't. To me, it's been a great adventure. At the beginning, when I was eighteen, because of the sexual harassment and because I came from an intellectual family, I decided not to be a model - I only became a model at twenty-eight. I felt I shouldn't be doing a job that takes advantage of your beauty. In fact, I didn't even think that I was beautiful. You know, there's a difference between being a pretty gift in your classroom and having the cover of Vogue.