Isabella Rossellini Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. In America, they are paranoid about ruining the reputations of people once they are dead and cannot answer back. They have this fascination which to me seems cruel and morbid. I do not want any part of it.

12. When David left me I became totally brokenhearted.

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

14. I believe in a set of values I cannot live by. I set high goals for myself, I seek perfection, dream of exotic faraway places. But ultimately, what I long for isn't far away at all. It's in my own backyard. Imperfection charms me, familiar things move me... a celebration of what we have, instead of what we long for. That for me, is glamor.

15. When I took my clothes off in Blue Velvet, I wanted to convey the brutality of sex abuse. I wanted to look like a quartered cow hanging in a butcher shop as well as disturbingly appealing.

16. 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.

17. 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!

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. Make em cry. Make em laugh. Make em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more. But for heaven's sake, don't try to improve their minds. 

22. Since playing Dorothy, I was offered a children's film about Little Red Riding Hood in Cannon's Fairy Tale series.

23. My dad is 100 Years Old also touches on a controversy impossible to understand in today's moral climate, when Rossellini and Bergman were banished from Hollywood because they fell in love while she was married to another man. Bergman didn't make a U.S. film for seven years. They were hurt…To be ridiculed in the newspapers. My father was such an intellectual and moral person, to be reduced to a sexy playboy, it was humiliating.

24. Blue Velvet has scenes of violence, too, in which Dorothy is involved, but to me it was portraying her on an emotional level. 

25. If you're sad and you like beer, I'm your lady… The Saddest Music in the World.

26. The web is a double-edged sword. It has a huge potential for distributing content, creating contacts. There are a lot of advantages. The problem is that money is spent on technologies, not on content. 

27. My mother's ability to be a good mother has been questioned throughout her life. 

28. I like fashion and photography and emotions and creating.

29. Yes, there’s ageism in modeling and acting. I’m dying to see Diane Keaton or Sissy Spacek more, and we don’t see them as much. The story you hear over and over is about seducing a man and getting married, but women do much more than that. Maybe it will help having more women as directors, heads of cosmetic companies or heads of studios. It’s the whole system.

30. Anything you enjoy that much, you hope it will last. But I had a very long career. Now that seems to be rare. It’s even true of actors. The celebrity culture has collapsed your moment of success to four, five, six years - then you’re passé.

31. To make this dream happen, we need to open up the rivers.

32. David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. (commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet)

33. I forgot to say: "Mama, Ingrid Bergman." The one time that I needed it, they don't get it.

34. I like her mixture of morbid frankness and girlish playfulness. It's why we get along. It's not yin and yang. It's yin and yin somehow. She has, as I do, an ongoing dialogue and relationship with all the important dead people.

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