The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Isabella Rossellini

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Legendary actress, author, model, and farmer (!!) Isabella Rossellini joins Andy Richter to discuss her newfound love for farm life, growing up around paparazzi, returning to school, and more.

Hi everybody, it's Andy Richter with another episode, another edition of The Three Questions and I'm very excited to talk to somebody of whom I have been a fan forever, not just her acting work, but just your presence in the universe. In the universe, ladies and gentlemen. I have a presence.

In the universe. Moon, sun. Yes, exactly. They've heard about, on Neptune right now, they're talking about you. No, you just, you have an enviable joie de vivre, hunger for knowledge. And you obviously are someone who puts a priority on having fun, which to me is the ultimate inhuman expression. You know, I always love to laugh since i was a little yeah but i was a little bit ashamed when people say what is the most important thing in your life and i i was a

little bit ashamed to say have fun laugh but now yeah i'm old and when you're old you know you're acquiring great freedom so i get it it is having fun and I am having fun every day. I plan, how am I going to have fun today? It is. Well, and I haven't said yet. I'm obviously talking to Isabella or Selina. You guys probably know that because you clicked on this. But yes, I'm the same. I still, I feel like, I mean, being in comedy, having fun is sort of, you know, it's a job, job one, you know, in some ways.

you know, it's a job, job one, you know, in some ways, although you'd be surprised. I've been in rooms run by comedy writers who are like, come on, everybody quit screwing around. We need to make comedy. Oh, well, okay. That sounds fun. But I, you know, it's been a few times that I've worked on dramas and I just, I feel like, don't you people know that if you had fun on this set, the drama would be better too? Yeah. You know, like, even though you're not supposed to be getting laughs with the end product, if you have fun, you're buoyant, everything is just easier. I become more creative.

I have a lot of ideas. And then if there is a problem, it doesn't seem like the end of the world. So being joyful and I almost as a discipline, you know, I wake up in the morning and say, what are the things that I should be grateful for? And what are the things that I'm curious for? And then create a hierarchy. And of course, there are lots of things that annoy me, you know, to call the plumber. He hasn't showed up, you know, or more serious thing.

But if you start with the right foot, it's almost a discipline. You will, I mean, it affects me in a positive way and I'm more creative. I have more ideas, more solution to problems. Instead, if I start with the wrong foot saying, oh, it's so sad, this is happening and this is happening my it's almost like my creativity and my ability to come up with solution will become smaller was there a certain point i mean you taught you you mentioned that you thought it was sort of uh maybe you know silly to to say you know the thing you like most is having fun and laughing was there a point at which i mean was there sort of a turning point that you note when that started to change?

I think when it started to change where I could admit it. You know, I was not a very good student at school and I was very tormented with the exam because, of course, I pretended I knew more and I was always unmasked. That follows humiliation. And then later, you know, when I became an older model and actress, there was not much work. And I went back to study animal behavior and conservation and completed my master three years ago. I'm now 70. So I completed my master when I was 66 or 67. And it was pure joy in the sense that I just followed my curiosity. I didn't think that my knowledge would let me to create films about animal and bring me to stage and do a monologue. It was just curiosity. And if the exam, I did not totally understand the lesson, well, you know, I'll try again.

Or it was curiosity. So even if you don't understand something, the question is interesting and you keep going. It wasn't result-oriented. So I think that's the moment that I said, oh, that's what's so joyful. Joyful is about following your curiosity and not not expected to have that success and this success. Of course, I'm happy when I'm successful. But the medicine when you're not successful or the medicine in life for me is to follow my curiosity. I think, you know, I felt when I got out of college, it was a couple of years after I got out of college.

And I felt like, you know, I think I'm ready for college now. You know, like now I'm ready. I'm ready to learn actual things that are in books as opposed to how many substances my body can take, you know, how much sleeplessness I can get by on, you know. So, yeah, I, you know, I would love I hope to come to it. For me, I have this fantasy of someday going back to school, but for psychology. I have to say that for me was one of the most wonderful experiences. And I'm most thankful to myself. But to make that decision, imagine I had to, I went to therapy.

I went to see a therapist saying I would like to go back to school, but I'm so old at 60. But is it a ridiculous dream? And she was very encouraging. And so I owe a lot to her. But the handicap of going back at age was so strong that I needed a therapist. To say it was okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you live in a farm now. So I imagine the work never ends. came, the village of Bellport is where I came for 40 years for like New Yorkers, you know,

for the weekend and your weekend that you, you know, you break the summer by coming to the country. And then about now, 15 or 20 years ago, I started to live here more and more. And now I, and then when I decided to go back to university, I sold my apartment in New York, bought a farm because I wanted to live, be close to the animals. And I didn't know that buying the farm, which is now 10 years old, would have had such an incredible impact in my community. It's called Mama Farm because there's so many children coming to see the season when the carrots are growing. Now this is the season of tomatoes and eggplant and then we have baby chicks and ducklings and bees this morning. See, I'm still dressed with my jeans

because we started to harvest. Overalls, yeah. Overalls because we started to harvest the honey. And it's very interesting, but yes, it never ends. It's an incredible, and that's why artisanal farm and farmers are abandoning small farms. And then there's people like me are doing it because I think we made money in another discipline and we can afford the farm. The farm nowadays is kind of a luxury.

But the impact to the community is enormous. So I didn't know that. I thought I was going to do it for my own interest and more fun. But now Mama Farm kind of belongs to the community. I don't feel it's even mine anymore because people are so participating, so supportive. Yeah. Well, that's ideally what mamas are supposed to do. They're supposed to sort of work towards their own obsolescence. So, you know, it's, you know, it's all, you know, parental love is kind of a one-way street. You give it and then they go away and you're like, well, I guess that's it.

Now, did you need help at the beginning? Did you, I mean, when you started the farm? I mean, it seemed, I would be, it would be such a daunting task. Well, you know, so the beginning was a piece of land, 30 acres that became available. So I sold the apartment in New York and bought it. But then these 30 acres were zoned residential. So there is a very long bureaucracy where you have to change the zoning, which isn't very simple at all. And so we created an easement and it was the Peconic Land Trust that helped me.

The Peconic Land Trust is one of these organizations that work in Long Island to preserve farmland and open space in Long Island. So they guided me through the bureaucracy and how to do it. Then once, then, then when that was resolved, now it was time to, you know, start digging holes and plant. And I said, but I'm very lucky. And an incredible lady called me up that I didn't know. Her name is Patty Gentry. And she said, I've been a chef for 25 years and I've now learned to be a grower. And I would like to start my own little farm. I'm told that you bought a piece of land and you want to run a farm. Can I run it for you? And so Patty is now running all the vegetable and her business

is called Early Girl Farm and Mama, so Early Girl Farm is within Mama Farm and I have Mama Farm and my interest, my principal interest is animals and so I run and curate the collection of animals that are mostly what is called heritage breed. What I didn't know, and I learned in school and being a farmer, is that a lot of farm animals became endangered, not the species, but the breeds. Because we favor monoculture, as we only eat one type of spinach or one type of asparagus or one type of corn, but there are many different varieties.

And Patty grows also different varieties of corn and spinach. So it's about chickens or eggs. You buy brown eggs and white eggs. But the eggs can come speckled, blue, green. So the heritage breed of this animal were not very popular in very big industrial farming, but could be raised by small artisanal farm like mine. And that is also our contribution to maintain biodiversity. So I have very interesting sheep and I have very interesting chickens with

with crests, my eggs. When they show my eggs, people say, ha, there is who and has, because they come in all different colors. They think I paint them, but they, I don't paint them. That's the way they are. Yeah. Does the farm make money? Do you sustain yourself by selling eggs or by selling meat? Some of it.

I mean, my daughter is the managing director of the farm, and that's her principal's task. She has gotten the hardest part. How to make it financially viable? And by viable, I mean, all of us know that we're not going to become rich with the farm. But really, life is so interesting. And if we were to pay to have 30 acres cultivated with all these animals and all this, you know, with CSA, which is cooperative farm

setups. So we do sell our product and we are forming a non-for-profit, all these things that are very complicated, but try to make it live beyond me and my ability to earn money as an actress. And instead of buying jewelry and fur coats, I have a farm. So we have to get away from that and make it stand on its own feet. But it will take a little while. It will take a few years. Did raising animals change any of your ideas about eating meat? I don't know whether you're a vegetarian or not. No, you I'm not vegetarian but I am very hypocrite because I cannot eat my chickens I buy chicken at the supermarket or I buy but I don't eat mine the one that I yeah I can't get myself to eat them by other farmers no some can but some also like I do I thought oh

it's just me because I'm urban and I'm an actress and I'm silly and I'm not a vegetarian. I eat meat, but meat of animals I've never met personally. I thought I was a thing, but apparently it's a common problem. It is a common thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a weird thing that I think people don't understand because I grew up in a rural area and while the farm that we lived on was sort of defunct as a farm it had been a farm but it was just you know we had an orchard but my grandfather raised pigeons and quail but that's you know and but we ate the quail pigeon and quail well yeah some quail but no people don't eat pigeons anymore no they my grandfather did but even in those days nobody else nobody's like no thank you to the pigeon.

Imagine, I'm making a film in Italy in a little town called Orvieto, which is up on a canyon, you know, like a medieval town built on the canyon. And underneath this canyon is full of grottos. And the grottos, you can now visit the grottos, and the grottos is full of niches that they use for pigeons because the town, if you put the town in a state of siege, there was no food for the town. And so he encouraged all these, the pigeons to enter in the grottos and then they could easily catch them and eat them and don't starve. So, people are one of the food that was most popular and it was easy because they always come home and, you know,

and it's the perfect portion. Like, if you kill a chicken, you need at least three to four people to eat it. So, it's the right portion,

isn't it? Well, you read, I mean, one of the staples of the ancient Roman diet was mice, which, you know, yeah, yeah. Like they were bar snacks, mice, you know, when you go and have a drink, you'd have a couple of mice, you know, thrown in there with it, which, I mean, it makes sense.

We just, you know, we hygienically, it just seems on, you know, but I mean, you know know there's such a always moving line between what's what's feasible to eat and what's not you know like i grew up as as a child having frog legs on a regular basis too i and of course yeah a few years ago i thought i'm gonna order i was a fancy restaurant i'll get some frog legs couldn't do it you couldn't eat it didn't taste like chicken anymore it tasted unpleasant to me. I just, I couldn't get over the idea of it. I remember going to France because I worked a lot in France being a model and my daughter, and one night I went to dinner with some friends and I came back home. My daughter was very little and she said, what did you eat? And I said, oh, I had

delicious snails and frogs and her mouth dropped. And she said, Mama, you're eating like a witch. Yes, I am. That's wonderful, yeah. Can't you tell my love's a girl? You know, I do want to touch on your childhood because it's pretty unique. I don't know if anybody's ever told you, but being the child of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, you were sort of born famous. And was it hard to grow up with such kind of the world looking at you?

When I see Angelina Jolie's children being photographed by the paparazzi, and it was similar. We had paparazzi, and they were after us. I mean, they were really mostly after my parents, really, and mostly about my mom. You know, director has, although my father was very known, he doesn't have that kind of obsessive curiosity that an actor can generate. But yes, the children are, because we were children of two famous people,

we were photographed by paparazzi. And it was hard, you know, because of course I smoked secretly. I said to my mom, oh, I'm going to go to the library. Instead, I went to a party. And then they were the paparazzi and on the photo appeared. So, oh my God, another moment of it. I thought, oh, my God, another moment of it. Yeah. Growing up in a in a in a show business family like that, do you carry away from it sort of like an appreciation for kind of its its important duty or does the absurdity of it kind of impress you more? Well, you know, I think in Europe it's slightly different than in America.

In America, I think actors are almost like your royalties, you know, fantasize about the stars and all this. In Europe, it's more of a regular job. You know, you are not, but they do fantasize, some of them, about royalties still. Yeah, well, there's real royalty there. There are still royalties. Yeah, there's still monarchies. You know, I mean, the obsession with Lady Di, for example, you know.

Yeah. You know, so actors and filmmakers don't get that kind of obsession. She was so exceptional in the sense that she solicited the curiosities to a level that was unprecedented. So, you know, I don't know. You know, my parents, first of all, when you're digital, you don't understand. I thought my parents were famous because they were parents. I thought that just by being parents, you become famous.

And I remember when I started to realize, maybe when I was 10 or 11, that my parents were different than other parents. I had to ask my school friend, but is my mom as famous as Joan Crawford? How about Greta Garbo? I needed them to tell me a measurement. Yeah, a frame of reference. A frame of reference. Yeah. When my daughter was little, I was a model and a very successful model.

When my daughter was little, I was a model and a very successful model. And my photo was, I was working for, I'm still working for a cosmetic company called Lancome. So at the time there were posters in the airport everywhere with me in the advertisement. And my daughter was five or six years old. And they took a school that were teaching the children to learn their last name and their address just in case they get lost. And so they taught everybody last name, their address if you get lost. And then the professor, the teacher asked my daughter, OK, her name is Electra. OK, Electra, now you are lost. What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?

And she said, well, I'm just going to sit under my mom's poster because that's what it is. You know, there are all these photos of mamas and fathers in the airport. So you can just sit under it and your parents eventually will come pick you up. She didn't even understand that I was working in advertisement. She thought all these photos were mama and daddies. What a beautiful picture of like such a supportive, caring world. Such a supportive, caring world, exactly. Well, we got to keep track of all the moms and dads that are coming to the airport today and get those posters up so the children feel safe. You grew up mostly in Italy, correct? Yes, I grew up mostly in Italy, but a lot in France too.

I was three years old when my parents divorced. And then my mom moved to Paris to live in Paris. And my father stayed in Rome. So from three to eight, we lived in Paris with my mom. And then at eight years old, we went to Rome. And mama stayed in Paris, but we started to live in Rome, mostly also because my parents travel a lot. You know, the nomadic life of filmmakers and actors. And Mama thought that it was easier to stay in Rome because the extended family was in Rome.

The grandmother, the aunt, the cousin. So Mama was Swedish, was not French. Right, right. And Mama, unfortunately, lost her parents when she was very small. So she was an orphan. So we didn't have a Swedish family. We had a very big extended Italian family. So from the age of eight to 18, I grew up in Rome.

And then I came to New York and then studied here first. And then I wasn't a good student. So I started to model. And, you know, that's how it went. And then act. Did you go to boarding school or did you go to day school? No, I went to day school. No, no, I went to boarding school.

Though I was always threatened to be sent to boarding school because I picked up every stray dog I could find in the streets. So I was told, if you don't stop, we're going to send you to boarding school. So I was told, if you don't stop, we're going to send you to boarding school. And what was your father's presence like in the house? I mean, by that time, had he remarried? Did you have a stepmother that you lived with? Both my parents remarried. My father married from a woman from Calcutta.

So I have a brother and a sister who are half Indian and half Italian. And my mother remarried with a wonderful producer from Sweden, I'm very attached to, but they didn't have any children. My father was a very big patriarch. I remember one day, listening to him giving an interview, we were going to have dinner and he had to do an interview. And so he said, sit there and wait for me for half an hour. So I'm, you know, sitting there waiting. And the interviewer said to my father, what kind of father are you? And he answered, I'm a Jewish mother. And he was a Jewish mother.

It was very caring, obsessing. Have you eaten? Yeah, yeah. caring, obsessing. Have you eaten? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think you have taken from him? And what have you taken from your mother? I think my father was very joyful. And so was my mom, but my mom was much more shy and a little bit Swedish, you know, very, very, you know, joy, both of them very funny. And we laughed a lot. And I'm sure my mom would have said that also the most important thing in her life was to laugh. But she was extremely shy. My father was not extremely shy and had an incredible generosity that I think came from the fact that he lived between two wars.

And everything could be lost so fast so that he lived every day fully and with enormous generosity. You know, if he earned money and then he walked in the street and he saw somebody poor, he gave him the money. And you say, but what do we do tomorrow? And I could tell that in his face, there were doubts that he would survive tomorrow because this was a generation that lived between two wars. So he was wonderfully generous and fatalistic. And Mama was charming beyond funny and charming and warm, but very shy. Do you think you're shy? Are you shy? Because it's always such an interesting dichotomy that I think a lot of people don't understand about someone that goes into show business who's shy. It doesn't seem to make sense, but then to me, it makes perfect sense

that I can't exactly explain why, but I have my theories. I tell you, my mom gave me an answer because she said that she was shy as herself, but when she acted, she was somebody else and when and and and she was very confident as an actress so she felt she said when I'm on stage I feel like a lion I feel strength and I work with Bob De Niro who's also very silent and very private and some people said oh he's maybe a snob he doesn't want to deal with the crew. But I didn't have that impression. I had the impression, I saw my mom shyness. You know, I feel the same reserve. She was reserved and he was reserved. And I think he understood that

because when we did a film together called Joy, I always sat next to him while we're waiting for shoots because it's true that the crew can talk to us actors and sometimes you get distracted and you're trying to stay concentrated. Or there is a lot of pauses in between takes. So I sat next to him because he didn't talk. But he didn't mind me sitting there because I had the feeling that he understood. That I knew he was shy and he didn't want to be disturbed.

Yeah. And so we sat together and, you know, and he was very cozy, but we didn't say a word. It was not on the script. I've often found that very famous people are very comfortable with uncomfortable silences. They don't mind at all because their life is so much small talk. And in fact, a friend of mine that was a writer on snl when robert de niro was he was either hosting or doing a bit there but robert de niro was just killing time in this guy's office and he was reading a newspaper and this guy was he was at his computer and and he felt that you

know he felt the awkward silence and he said so how many kids do you have to Robert De Niro? And Robert De Niro from behind his paper said, we don't have to do small talk. Okay. You know, to me, that would be like, thank you, Robert De Niro. That, you know, removes a burden, you know. Can't you tell my love's a girl? Do you feel, I mean, you know, does nationalism enter into your identity at all? Do you feel more French or Italian or, you know, U.S.? You know, I feel what I have lived. I feel Italian, Swedish, and French, and American.

Yeah. And so when I say Italian, French, and Sweden, that covers pretty much Europe, at least the north and the south. Sure. Might not have something that is very German, although my grandmother was German or Spanish. But sometimes I feel European, you know. But also, I lived in America for so long. And America allowed me that dynamism, that it was here, that energy.

allowed me that dynamism that is here, that energy. I think that I could have done the career that I have had, not so much in terms of success, but in terms of variety, you know, to be a model, to be an actress, to be a writer, to go back to school in my 60s, to university in my 60s, now to write and do monologues and continue to work as an actress, be a farmer. I think that freedom from jumping from one thing to another comes from America. America gave me this entrepreneur.

Anything is possible. Why don't you try? And if it doesn't work, OK, you do something else. And you move on. Instead, in Europe, you know, if it doesn't, something goes wrong and something is not successful, it's not so easy to move. Yeah. Do you think it's because it's the difference in age and the cultures? You know, Rome has been Rome forever, and our oldest cities are only a couple of hundred years old. Well, you know, it's more pronounced a class system in Europe. So there is the class system that creates a certain social rigidity. And then, yes, it's a mentality. I think you come to America or maybe New York even more than the rest of America to invent your life you want to live. You know, otherwise, you don't come to New York. It's so challenging.

Yeah, it is. And I don't know, I think it's typical of America and particularly New York. And in Europe, but I have to say that in Europe, people know how to do joie de vivre and also living. But, you know, here sometimes you really work so much until you burn down. That happens in Europe. You know, people really know how to eat well and are very convivial. And they go out and they take holidays. And they also, they are proud of it. They don't feel guilty.

Oh, my God, I took eight weeks of holidays this year. Everybody said, oh, great. Yeah, it's a necessity your work yes yeah yeah i see because for me i do feel it's like the difference between a young person like you know the states is like a teenager comparatively to you know like someone that's settled into their ways and that understands things like you know you have to eat well and you have to rest. And life is not all just money. There, you know, emphasis on happiness, you know,

and when they do these, you read these indexes in magazines about the happiest countries in the world. You know, it's Denmark. It's places where it's... It's funny. It's true. United States is down low. Yeah. Because of classification. It's hard where it's funny. It's true. United States is down low. Yeah. It was a classification. It's hard to go by. I don't think it's going to change. I think that's the way it is. And if it changes, it'll take many, many days or century.

But, you know, I'm lucky because I am here when I want to rest. I go to Europe. I come to America. Yeah. But for sure, in America, there is a dynamic spirit and an encouragement to do things. And I think if I lived in Europe, I wouldn't have had the variety in the career. Maybe I would have been a successful actress or a successful model, but I wouldn't have had this. Been able to do both yeah now you say you know you came to New York you weren't good at school I one thing I read that I never knew was that you were a reporter for Raiuno for the Italian television yes for a little bit I was but not

a serious reporter we did in Italy where there was a television program called L'altra Domenica which means the other Sunday the alternative Sunday the different Sunday and it was a television program called L'altra Domenica, which means the other Sunday, the alternative Sunday, the different Sunday. And it was a sketch. So it was born, this show, as sketches in between the soccer game results, because the soccer game and the bicycle, occasionally they had a break. And so a comedian, an Italian comedian, Renzo Arbo, who is a very good friend of mine still, hired some young people, including Roberto Benigni, Andy Luoto, all big names in a starring comedy, and me. And I created little reportages from America, but always fun.

The idea, I wasn't a comedian, a stand-up comedian, but I did things that were funny. And years later, when I did my television series for Sandance, Green Porn, No Seduce Me, Mama, it was very much what I did when I was 19 to 23, 24 and worked for rent. So there were sketches like this that I created. So there were sketches like this that I created and they became so popular that we were then taken off the soccer game interruption and we were given our own two hour show that became. Oh, wow. But then, you know, then the show was called to an end because everybody became so successful. And Roberto Benigni even won an Oscar for Life is Beautiful when he became a director and a comedian. And I didn't think I was a comedian.

I didn't think I could be stand-up comedy. And as I was saying, what am I going to do? I can't be a journalist and I can't be a stand-up comedian. That was such a niche of things that I've done. Modeling came about. I just had a friend, Bruce Weber, that wanted to show me, wanted to photograph me, then Fabrizio Ferri. And then this opened up a whole new career that I didn't pursue. It came to me as an enormous gift. Is modeling in and of itself, can you find gratification in it?

Oh, yes. I loved it. It's very much like acting. Richard Avedon said, being a model is a little bit like being a silent movie star. You don't have any words. Still, you have to express emotion. Because he said this beautiful sentence to me. He photographed emotion.

He said, I'm not photographing beautiful faces. I don't care about a beautiful face. There is no beauty without emotions. That stayed always with me. And I think as a model, I could offer a part of emotion my emotions and that's what led me to become an actress because I didn't want to be an actress because my mom was a very famous Ingrid Bergman and I thought I can only be always less than her and it would be really hard to be compared and said the lesser, the child less than a mother.

And then I thought and thought and I said, yes, it is a little bit like being a silent movie star. So I should attempt to be an actress because that was almost like it was offered to me. Role were offered to me and a lot of model became actresses or attempted to have career as an acting. And so that's how that only became an actress when I was in my 30s. Yeah. Did it take long for you to start, you know, really hitting your stride as a model and really working a lot? No, the modeling really was an overnight success. I mean, I didn't think I was going to be a model. You know, I didn't look at myself in the mirror and said, this is a beautiful face. Look at that thing. Look at that. It just happened. You know,

I work with Bruce Weber and Fabrizio Ferri, two photographers, but mostly Bruce because he was American. And we did a photo shoot for Vogue. And when Vogue saw my face, you know, they do always marketing research. And for some reason, the marketing research with my face was accepted by a lot of women. Later on, I was told, and it's really kind of sad in a way, that a lot of women recognize themselves in me. I remember a Pakistani woman coming up and saying, finally, one of us is represented. And I just said, I'm not Pakistani. But I wasn't a typical blonde, blue-eyed American apple pie. Yeah, yeah.

It was so surprising to me. The only thing I know is that when they did marketing research, people liked my face. And they were looking for a face to sell copies of the magazines. And so I did over 500 covers. And also that's what led me to become the face of Lancome for 15 years, which was unprecedented to be in a cosmetic company. But it just, there's something about my face that I don't know what it is. I suspect it isn't the fact that I'm, you know, green, brown eyes and dark hair. I think it is emotion. I think that I could emote in front of the camera and what people recognize is the emotion,

not so much, oh, she's not so blonde that I have to be intimidated because I can never be that blonde and blue eyes. I think the secret was acting and that's what allowed me to go into acting. Yeah. Before you started modeling, what were you going to do with yourself?

Well, you know, I started modeling, I was young, you know, 25, 26, and before that, I was working for the Italian television as a kind of comical reporter. I had finished so I did my high school, and then I went in Italy.

I thought to become, when I was 18, I went for three years into Academia di Costume Moda, kind of a FIT or Parsons or Cinematheque school. I thought I would be a fashion designer. No, not really a fashion designer. What I wanted to be, it was a costume designer. I still thought about making film because film was the only thing I knew.

And my cousin was a costume and set designer. And I particularly liked the costume. And so I started to become a costume designer. So also when I became a model, I understood fashion. It wasn't only the emotion and working, showing emotion for the camera or the different photographer. But I had lots of fun because I liked fashion and fashion is the contemporary eventually will become costume isn't it yes let years goes by so yeah well it always is a jeans and a t-shirt I guess that's

that can be a costume too but my god you know t-shirt spells America and spells the world right now you go you know I remember my stepmother I told you my dad was married from a woman from Calcutta Sonali and and she was married she was she always wore a sari but now you go to India jeans and t-shirt jeans and I think that when we would look at the newsreel of this time and age jeans and t-shirt will tell us it's 2020. Yeah. Because it's like when we look at people smoking on television, we don't see that anymore.

Or men all wearing a hat. You see all newsreels, all men wearing hats when they are in the streets. I think it's very much the signature of a time. Yeah. The one I love is men on the beach in suits. That's always funny to me. Yeah, men on the beach in suits or the incredible suits that women wore. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, you are a twin. Are you an identical twin or a fraternal twin? My fraternal twin, my sister is called Ingrid, and she's a scholar. She has a PhD of medieval literature and she taught at Columbia University at Yale. She's also incredibly shy like my mom and she wrote a beautiful book about history of art and we're very, very close but she's very shy and intellectual and I'm not shy and I'm not an intellectual so maybe it has to do with the fact that we're sister because when you are little and you grew up together and we were dressed the same

and we shared the same bedroom she was very shy so I made we have exactly the same voice so all the phone calls I made them for her to a friend to a boyfriend even to a boyfriend, even to my mom. I pretended to be Ingrid so she can be off the hook. You know, she had to be scolded. I'll do you. I'm not going to tell the difference between the two of us. So I think I've learned, I became more and more extrovert and she became more and more shy. Yeah.

Well, that was, I was going to ask, you know, because there is such a bond. My younger brother and sister are twins and there's such a bond that happens even from, you know, they talk about it and I used to see it, they had their own language before they could speak English. And I just, I would wonder if like, as you're going, traveling the world and becoming, you know, your face ending up all over airports, if that was ever, if she was anything other than just proud, if there was ever any kind of, I think if, and no, I think she was proud and she wouldn't want to be at me in that because if,

if she was ever a little jealous of me, it was not because I was recognized or in a poster in an airport, but because I was not shy and extroverted and I could talk to people and I could find common ground. And for her, it was so torturous to talk to somebody or answer questions. You know, if she will be here talking to you today, she would have not slept the night before. She would be all red. Her voice would tremble. She would give an answer and then say, what did I say? Was this really something else? Yeah.

Yeah. When you started acting, I mean, you kind of, like you said, people were approaching you to do it. It wasn't anything that you were necessarily pushing. When you started doing it, did you worry about technique? Did you worry that I'm doing this thing? I did. For the first film, I've done a film in Italy, a couple of films in Italy, but one played myself and another one, it was a kind of neorealistic film, like my dad.

It's this kind of film in Europe where a lot of directors prefer to work with non-actors, just a style. And so I worked with a brother, Taviani, but I never thought I was going to be an actress. The first film that was offered to me was White Nights with Misha Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. Oh, yeah. Both of us were actors, nor, I mean, Gregory a little bit, but in theater, I'm most tap dancing. Right. And so Misha and I, Misha was at the time with Jessica Lange, and Jessica Lange had a wonderful acting coach, Sandra Seacat. And Misha and I went to Sandra and had at least three or four months of training. And then I continued even after the film because I really thought that I could learn something. And I stayed with Sandra and even went to other classes. Then the second film was Blue Velvet, which was incredibly controversial when it came out.

It almost stopped my career, both as an actor and a model. But in fact, then it continued. So, but I did have some training. Yes, at least two or three years of training. And once in a while, I go back to work with Sandra. Oh, that's great. That's great. You brought it up.

Blue Velvet. You know, David Lynch. I think the only feature he'd done at that point was Eraserhead, correct? No, he had done several. He had done Eraserhead. It was very, very interesting. Yeah. But Elephant Man, which was...

Oh, Elephant Man. That's right. But it was kind of a typical David Lynch film, but it was beautiful. Yes. And then he did Dune, the first Dune that was very unsuccessful and it was crushed. And because, you know, he was built up to be this young,

wonderful talent, was given a big production of Dune. There is the new version this year that was very successful. Yeah. You know, De Laurentiis was a wonderful producer, crazy and said to David, I'll give you three million dollars, which isn't much for a film. And you make the film you want because you have to go back on your feet. You have talent. And David wrote Blue Velvet. And that's how we've met. And with Laura Dern and Kyle MacLoughlin.

And I call them my family. Since then, we remained all very, very close friends. Yeah, I got the chronology wrong there. But I mean, those other, you know, Elephant Man was a beautifully realized movie, but it's a fairly classic. Exactly. You know. Yes, David became less and less interested in the narrative, but more interested in atmosphere where you don't really know what's going on. And one day he said to me, when I said to him, I don't really understand the story. He said to me, but do you understand life?

That's what I want to capture. We don't understand life. And yet we enter into a room and immediately we know if we have to say, hello, how are you? We great gratefulness or we have to say, hello, how are you? Formally, why? That is what I'm interested. I'm interested in this atmosphere and not the answer. I thought it was the perfect description of his work. Yeah, because I was going to say it. It must have been really something to get on that set.

You know, as you said, it was, you have to be joyful. Even in a difficult set, it talks about sadomasochism and rape and ritualistic rape and drugs, violence. On the set, there has to be

a sense of trust. Otherwise, you shut up. You know, as an actor, you shut up. You're afraid. If the people are like, in real life, like Dennis Hopper was in the film, forget about it.

I would be against a wall like this. But instead, it was friendship and talking about it and feeling safe that allow us to create a film that it is so rich. After that, how do you go and do just a regular old movie from that point? No, it was hard I mean both because it was controversial and so and I think my character was very controversial I played a woman a battered woman and I don't think there were that many roles already of battered women and complicated psychology you know not a battered woman where it's completely clear that she's battered she was a battered woman but she was so afraid it's called clear that she's battered. She was a battered woman, but she was

so afraid. It's called the Stockholm syndrome, you know, and she perpetuates the violence on herself. She facilitates it, you know, to try, you know, it's a real mental disease. So I portrayed that, and I think it was maybe the first time that he was portrayed. And so people didn't understand exactly what I was doing. Then the film acquired a lot of reputation and became loved. But at the first, it was tough. And so the other films that I followed, you know, it was really difficult. My agency asked me to leave. I didn't want to represent me.

I didn't have an agent for a long time. Modeling became jeopardized. Lancome threatened to fire me because I had a clause for no scandal. And maybe Drew Velvet was considered a scandal. So it was a tough two years. And then, you know, we continued. And I did a film, very unsuccessful one, but he gave me lots of confidence with crazy Norman Mailer.

He did a film, Tough Guys Don't Dance. And Norman was a tough guy. And not that he gave me a lot of confidence as an actress, but I respected him intellectually. And he loved Blue Velvet. And he hired me because of Blue Velvet. And just having a man of that caliber telling me no what you did is fantastic and it was produced by Tom Lottie who produced a um Francis Coppola's film and Francis also was complimentary so that rebuilt a little bit of my self-confidence

and we did the film Tough Guys Don't Dance didn It didn't do any good. But still out of that then came other films. And I did Cousin with Joel Schumacher, who was a very famous director and a delightful human being. And Cousins were very well accepted. And so then I was restored. You're back, yeah. But back. You're back, yeah. I'm back.

One of the movies that you've been in, your favorite one to watch, and the one that you feel proudest of your own performance in? I think Blue Velvet. I'd say Blue Velvet is one of them for sure. I also love working with John Schlesinger. We also did a film that was not successful called The Innocent. But he gave me great confidence. He worked with the best actors from England. You know, he did Midnight Cowboy, Sunday Bloody Sunday,

Far From a Maddening Crowd. I'll just give you the title of the most famous film that he had done. He worked with Julie Christie, Tony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave. I mean, everybody that was considered. And he said to me one day that he saw me, you know, a little sitting on the corner, he said, but you are as good as them. And I saw that he was sincere. He wasn't doing it. You know, he just, I just felt such warmth and I felt a relaxing and trusting me. So I'm very, very grateful to John. I like a Dutch film that I've done called Left Luggage,

where I played Orthodox Jewish mother, you know, with all covered and all that. It's so interesting. It was like being an anthropologist because I'm Roman Catholic and, you know, to enter a whole different culture, it was very interesting. I talk about it in my new monologue because my new monologue is about the expression of emotions. Darwin wrote about it.

He wrote about the expression of emotion in an animal. Of course, expression of emotion is the core of acting is the expression of emotion. So I talk about it in my monologue that when I played the Orthodox Jewish woman, I had an accent coach because I had to speak with a Yiddish accent, and I often have acting coaches to me. But I also had to have a gesture coach to make sure that I could do his gesture. If I said I read a book, I couldn't have indicated with my hand turning the page from right to left, but left to right, you know, they were all little things like that. It was so interesting. Now, I want to mention your show, Darwin's Smile, which you're performing now.

Yes. It's, you know, this is the first time that my monologue, I'm trying to connect all the dots of what I am is interesting in my life, animals, especially animal behavior. That's my master degrees on animal behavior and acting and acting is about human behavior. And Darwin incredibly wrote a book that was not very known called On the Expression of Emotion on Men and Animal, where he wonders why if I smile's understood all over the world. But if I do this and I'm doing a gesture in this Zoom call with you, where I'm shaking my hand the way Italians do, they gather their fingers and they shake it up and down.

Then Italian is an interrogation mark. And in Italy, we have a lot of gestures. We can even just speak with gestures and create little sentences. And so Darwin wondered if some expression were shaped by evolution, smiling, frowning, being angry, all things that are understood all over the world. But also there is another connection with me and my life, photography, because photography is the beginning of photography when Darwin was an old man and he used photography to try to fix expressions so he could study them and make comparison.

If people smiled like that all over the world, if people cried like that all over the world, what was the commonality of expression? And my grandfather was a photographer from my mom's side, he was just Bergman. And my grandfather, from my father's side, it was the architect that built the first silent movie theater in Rome. Oh, wow.

So there is a long history. So I connect photography, and of course, I also worked as a model with great photographer, expression of emotions, animal. It's all together. How did you start to think, you know, obviously these thoughts, how did you think to coalesce them into a show, a monologue or a one-woman show? Some of it, you know, it came as fragment because I did other shows and so I, you know, used a fragment of references. So, but I was commissioned, there's a beautiful museum in Paris called the Musée d'Orsay. And the Musée d'Orsay used to be a It's called the Musée d'Orsay.

And the Musée d'Orsay used to be a railroad station, a train station, and was transformed into a museum. It's right in the center of town and is the museum of the 19th century's art. All the Impressionists, the Renoir, the Gauguin, the Cézanne are there. And two years ago, they had an exhibit about how the theory of evolution influenced art. And I'll give you an example. Darwin said that there is a continuity between us and animals. We are animals. Therefore, are we wild like animals, the real nature of men, or are animals as compassionate and tender as we are? And if they are as compassionate and tender, can we eat them? And if there is something wild in us, how do you avoid violence, war? How do you condemn it if that is the real nature? And one of the best examples that was in this exhibit, it was very well curated and fun was King Kong. King Kong was a beast that was having feeling for a woman

and a woman had feeling for the beast. If you don't separate clearly what is human and what is animal, aren't you going to have this horrible hybrid and monsters? It was an absolutely fascinating exhibit. And they asked me to write something about art because I did all my green porn. There were little films. I did a lot of about 50 short films that became very viral on the Internet. I did them for the Sandance Channel. And so they commissioned me to do a 40-minute lecture on this. And that's how we started.

And it was called Darwin's Smile and Darwin's Headache. There were two more. And a producer came and he said, I love it. Can you develop it into a monologue? And that's what I did. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Green porno for people who don't know, because I had been aware of it, but then in preparing for this, I looked at, I looked at a few of them and they are just they're wonderful they're short little they're basically about you know different uh it's reproduction different methods of animal reproduction and the crazy the crazy breath crazy yeah anything happens in nature you know yeah that oh it has to be mama and papa uh Uh-uh. No, no, no. Anything is possible.

Yeah, yeah. The premise of Green Point. Yeah. Well, and I saw that one of the ones was elephant seals. And I was struck by the fact that this whole raison d'etre of the males is to be triumphant in violence so that they can procreate. And so that this, you know, that the- But that is true of many animals. I mean, roosters-

It's, when we think about it, it's like there's such violence in life. There is such violence in life. You know, at the farm, I have turkeys and I have roosters, and they do fight. In fact, the roosters are bigger than the hen, the chicken, or the female. And that in science, now I talk to you as a scientist, called demorphism. And when the two sexes, they have a different evolutionary history. And if the male fight, the male become bigger, they also become more colorful. And that might be due to the fact that it's called a secondary sexual characteristic, big colorful feathers, big song, dances, it's all done to challenge another male and to attract the female

but it's a different evolutionary history of the female that instead is smaller because she doesn't fight with other female or not that much and she has to camouflage to hide with the babies in the bushes and so you see two different and there's the same species but very different of male and the female. And so it's not only the elephant seal. And the elephant seal is really incredibly different. The male is enormous. And he has this enormous nose

that's almost like an elephant, not as long as Trump, but almost and enormous. And the female is very small and he controls a harem. You know, he has many, many females and he's there all day long making sure another male doesn't come in. But now we know with science, because we can

do DNA, that he's not always the father of all babies. There are the so-called sneaky males at the periphery. While the male is busy, maybe fighting another male or mating with the female, a younger male, not as strong, sneaks in and has a quickie with one of the elephant seal female and runs off. So if you do the DNA, you see that 30% of the population is not, the father is not the big dominant male. The message is that nature is telling us be sneaky. Yes. Well, you can't be sneaky. You don't have to be the strongest.

You can also be sneaky. Yeah, yeah. Just be sneaky. Well, what would you like people to take away from your story? I mean, do you feel? Well, I think one of the important things that I learned is to follow your curiosity. I opened this interview. And I think it's also the recipe for happiness and joyfulness.

Follow your curiosity. It could start with something very simple, a little butterfly, a worm in your vase of flowers. It's so joyful. And from anything, you can discover so many things that would take away because we are so, maybe more women, but also men also men I think we're so severe with ourselves you know we look at ourselves we're aging we're ugly I'm I'm too fat I'm too short I should be this I should have said that I should have been dressed that way I should have had this you know

there's always I should I should I should I try not to do should should should I try not to hear that voice not that I don't have it but I try not to hear it and. Not that I don't have it, but I try not to hear it and just be projected to exteriorly and say, what is interesting? I don't know. I say that because I'm 70 and I feel obliged to be wise. So I say that's my message of wisdom. Well, it's a good message. It's a good message. And I think it's the kind of message that is a lesson that I feel like I've learned. I'm 55 and then I feel like I've learned. And there's so many things that I feel so sure of now that I just wish like, oh, if I'd only had a grasp of this when I was 35. Me too.

You know, I just would have. There's so, you know, the word suras. There's so much less suras in my life, so much less anxiety and worry over things that now just seem silly. Yes, it lifts. Life becomes lighter and joyful with age. And everybody talks about the wrinkle and this hurts, oh, this hurts. But there is a joyfulness that comes with age and a serenity that is not emphasized

enough, but it is great. Well, this was a joyful interview, Isabella, and thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. And I encourage everyone, if you're lucky enough to live in a city where you can see Darwin's smile. It was lovely talking to you. It was lovely talking to you and thank all of you out there for listening.

I'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco production. It is produced by Sean Doherty and engineered by Rob Schulte. Additional engineering support by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel. Executive produced by Joanna Salitaroff, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Maddie Ogden. Research by Alyssa Grawl. Don't forget to rate and review and subscribe

to The Three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. Can't you feel it in the show? Oh, you must be a-knowin'. I've got a big, big love. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.