BEAUTY ICON OF THE WEEK: Isabella Rossellini

Birth Name

Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini

Born: June 18,1953 In Roma Italy

Rossellini was born in Rome, and raised there, as well as in Santa Marinella and Paris. At 13, she was diagnosed with scoliosis. In order to correct it, Isabella had to undergo an 18 month ordeal of painful stretchings, body casts, surgery on her spine using pieces of one of her shin bones (used to add supports for the individual vertebrae without risking foreign body rejection tissues), and a recovery from that surgery. Consequently, she has permanent incision scars on her back and shin.Rossellini is the daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She has three siblings from her mother: her twin sisterIsotta Ingrid Rossellini, who is an adjunct professor of Italian literature; a brother, Roberto Ingmar Rossellini, who works in finance; and a half-sister, Pia Lindström, who formerly worked on television and is from her mother's first marriage. She has four other siblings from her father's two other marriages: Romano (died at age 9), Renzo, Gil, and Raffaella.

At 19, she went to New York, where she attended Finch College, while working as a translator and a RAI television reporter. She also appeared intermittently onL'altra Domenica ("The Other Sunday"), a TV show featuring Roberto Benigni. However, she did not decide to stay full time in New York until her marriage to Martin Scorsese (1979–1982).

CAREER

At the age of 28, her modeling career began, when she was photographed by Bruce Weber for British Vogue and by Bill King for American Vogue. During her career, she has also worked with many other renowned photographers, including Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Norman Parkinson, Eve Arnold, Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Denis Piel, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Her image has appeared on such magazines as Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar,Vanity Fair, and ELLE. In March 1988, an exhibition dedicated to photographs of her, called Portrait of a Woman, was held at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Rossellini's modeling career led her into the world of cosmetics, when she became the exclusive spokesmodel for the international cosmetics brand Lancôme in 1982, replacing Nancy Dutiel in the United States and Carol Alt in Europe. At Lancôme, in 1990, she was involved in product development for the fragrance "Trésor". In 1996, she was removed as the face of Lancôme for being "too old", since she was in her 40s at the time.

In 1995, she worked with the Coty Group and developed her own brand of cosmetics, Isabella Rossellini's Manifesto. She is signed to Trump Model Management.

In 2003, Rossellini had a recurring role on the television series, Alias. In that same year, she also appeared in the Canadian film The Saddest Music in the Worlddirected by Guy Maddin. In 2004, she played the High Priestess Thar in the Sci Fi Channel miniseries Legend of Earthsea. In addition, she acted in an Off-Broadway production of The Stendhal Syndrome. She became an ambassador for the Silversea Cruise Line, which has her appearing in print ads and on their website. Rossellini made her film debut with a brief appearance as a nun opposite her mother in the 1976 film A Matter of Time. Her first role was the 1979 film Il Prato. She did not become successful with acting until after her mother's death in 1982, when she was cast in her first American film, White Nights (1985). She is probably best known for her pivotal role as the tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch's Blue Velvet. Some other notable film roles include her work in Cousins, Death Becomes Her, Immortal Beloved, and Fearless.

In 2006, Rossellini appeared in several television documentaries. First, she narrated a two-hour television special on Italy for the Discovery Channel's Discovery Atlasseries. In addition, on an episode of the Sundance Channel series Iconoclasts, which also featured the Segway PT inventor Dean Kamen, she told about her past and current activities.^[3] In 2007, Rossellini guest starred on two episodes of the television show 30 Rock, playing Alec Baldwin's character's ex-wife.

In 2008, Rossellini toured the festival circuit, including the Sundance Film Festival, with a series of short films entitled Green Porno, which she wrote and co-directed with Jody Shapiro. Each Green Porno film is two minutes long, and has Rossellini reenacting the mating rituals of various animals.

Based on her success with Green Porno, in 2009 Rossellini headed the judging panel of the first Metropolis Art Prize, an art video contest run by web and mobile video service Babelgum, culminating in a large scale art display across the giant advertising monitors in Times Square, New York.

Rossellini has been announced as the President of the Jury for the 61st Berlin International Film Festival in 2011.

Awards

Rossellini received a 1987 Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for her role in Blue Velvet. In 1997, she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for her role in Crime of the Century and an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her work on the television series Chicago Hope.

In 2008, Rossellini wrote a number of television shorts on the Sundance Channel called Green Porno. The short segments (about 2 minutes each) are written, hosted and acted out by Rossellini. She has written a book to accompany the third season - a multimedia experiment that contains a companion DVD, both of which serve as additional information for the series' third season.

HERE'S SOME TRIVIA FOR YOU:

In the "Tales from the Crypt" (1989) episode "You, Murderer", she spoofs her mother'sCasablanca (1942) image.

Half-sister of Pia Lindström.

Twin sister of Isotta Rossellini, who is an adjunct professor of Italian Renaissance literature at New York University (as of 2006). Sister ofRenzo Rossellini.

Dated Gary Oldman (1994)

Maintains a home in the village of Bellport, New York.

Was scheduled to appear in the David Lean-directed "Nostromo" in 1991, before Lean died, and the production came to a halt.

She suffered from scoliosis (progressive curvature of the spine) and underwent surgery to correct it. She was in a body cast for a year.

Virtually identical to her mother, Ingrid Bergman, but surprisingly had few opportunities to portray her mother in a biographical film. One occasion was an eerily accurate spoof of Ilsa Lund in an episode of "Tales from the Crypt" (1989). More recently, in the movie My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2005) for which she wrote the script, she did a moving portrayal of her mother.

Has a daughter, Elettra (b. 1983), and an adopted son called Roberto (b. 1993) named after her father.

Published an autobiography called "Some of me".

Fluent in Italian, French and English.

Former model.

Sister of Renzo Rossellini and Roberto Ingmar Rosselini. Twin sister of Isotta Rossellini.

She is 34 minutes older than twin sister Isotta.

She is of Italian and Swedish descent.

Isabella is daughter of the two legends Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman.

Was engaged to director David Lynch from 1986 to 1990.

Her favorite Hollywood-film that her mother made is Notorious (1946). Her favorite film of her father, made without her mother, is The Rise of Louis XIV (1966) (TV) and The Flowers of St. Francis (1950).

Appeared in photographs for Madonna's coffee table book "Sex".

Her daughter Elettra Wiedemann is now the spokes model for Lacome Cosmetics, the company that "let her go" because of her age after she represented them for many years.

In 1983, Time magazine reported Rossellini's modeling salary of a then $9,000 a day.

Is an avid dog lover and helps train puppies for the blind.

Is a huge fan of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Personal Quotes

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 isAlfred Hitchcock, this is Spike Lee.

[On the Internet] 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.

Personal life

Isabella Rossellini holds dual United States and Italian citizenship.

She was married to Martin Scorsese from 1979 to 1982. After her marriage to Scorsese ended, she married Jon Wiedemann (1983–1986), a Harvard-educated model from Texas (now a Microsoft executive). Later, she dated David Lynch, Gary Oldman, and Gregory Mosher.

She has a daughter, Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann (born 1983), and a son, Roberto(born 1992), whom she adopted with Gary Oldman.

Mykie's Note:

What a great beauty this woman is. Isabella Rossellini is one of my favorite actress, that aside she's one off my favorite people in the world. I have yet to meet her, but she comes of as such a genuine person. On film she has created some of the most memorable characters in film history, BLUE VELVET? thank you. I truly feel in love in 1988/89 with the release of Cousins, a sweet, romantic film remade from a french film. She has the most amazing presence of grace that i have ever seen. and on film its glowing Right before your eyes.

It's a shame really, I would love to see her in more film work, she continues to work, but its far and in between for my taste.

There isn't much about her that isn't an inspiration for me. back in the days when I was working at photography studios and doing photo shoots for wanna-be models we would always refer to Issabelle rossellini as a look. and makeup up the model to look like an image we saw of her either in a Lancome ad or on a magazine cover. She I one person I would love to meet before I kick the bucket, so let's just say she's top 5 of my bucket list.

And as always here is a list of the films that I love that she has made, Check Them out, you may have yet to see some of them. turn out the light, pop the corn and start the show!

mykie xoxo