“I don’t study animals to understand humans,” Conclave actor and ethologist Isabella Rossellini says.
Isabella Rossellini was considered cinema royalty when she was born in 1952, the daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. But she quickly dispelled any notions of being a nepo baby. After becoming
Now 72, Isabella has become the kind of actor who signals artistic gravitas, offbeat humour and bold experimentation in any production she’s in. She has delivered particularly pungent vocal performances in animated features like Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and Human Resources, as well as her own short films about the reproductive lives of animals, an oeuvre known as Green Porno. Along the way, she has earned a master’s degree in ethology, the science of animal behaviour; she performed her one-woman show, Darwin’s Smile, about the emotional connections between humans and animals, at La Scala Paris in November.
Isabella’s newest film, Conclave, stars Ralph Fiennes as a Catholic cardinal overseeing the selection of a new pope; Isabella plays Sister Agnes, a largely silent but acute observer of proceedings that inevitably bog down in politics and power plays. In October, the film shared the audience award with September 5 at the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia, where Isabella was interviewed by Vanity Fair contributor Maureen Orth before receiving the Agnès Varda Trailblazing Film Artist Award.
Isabella sat down with The Washington Post for a wide-ranging 45-minute conversation that went from her most recognisable roles and the mores of the Catholic Church to whether animals can reason - oh, and That Scene in Blue Velvet.
Q: Your Agnès Varda interview was preceded by a montage of nearly 50 years’ worth of movie performances. I was trying to decipher your face as you were watching it.
A: I couldn’t see it, because of the light [reflecting on the monitor]. I saw some [scenes], and sometimes I recognised the lines.
Q: So I guess what I was seeing on your face was, “I can’t see this”. Nothing deeper than that.
A: [Laughs] I did recognise “And now, a warning” from Death Becomes Her, because people tell me that in the streets.
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A: “Don’t you [expletive] look at me”, from Blue Velvet.
Q: Oh, my.
A: [Laughs] The first time it happened I thought the person was going to assault me. I said, “I’m not, sir, I’m not! What are you talking about?” And he said, “Oh, no, Isabella, it’s from Blue Velvet!” I was crossing a person in the street and he said that.
Q: You were asked about the scandal that ensued when your mother, Ingrid Bergman, left her husband, Petter Lindström, to live with your father, Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Although you weren’t yet born, the people who remember or are aware of that episode will most likely be bringing that history to your performance in Conclave. I know I did.
A: Yes, but you know it’s because probably you know film. A lot of young people don’t know it. When they say, “Your mother,” I always make a point to say, “My mother is Ingrid Bergman, the actress from Casablanca.” Because sometimes people don’t know, especially the young people. … I’m sure half the audience [doesn’t] know. Or they’ve forgotten it.
Q: When I was watching the movie, I was assuming that the Catholic hierarchy had been much more censorious of your parents than it actually was.
A: America was worse. It wasn’t Italy. It wasn’t the Catholic Church. It wasn’t at all the Catholic Church. I mean, sometimes they say things that are offensive or exclude people. But … I assume the church said, “Who are we to judge?” And we, as children, were accepted in all the Catholic schools. I never heard the nuns say anything like, “Your mother …” Never. I found that out later in life, and it was America. Because in America there’s a certitude. There’s good and bad. Black and white. And certitude is the enemy.
Q: We’re not comfortable living in the in-between.
A: Yes. I remember priests coming to have dinner at my parents’. My father didn’t go to church, his mother did, but he was culturally Catholic. So I remember a lot of priests coming home and debating and asking for their point of view.
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Q: I noticed in your conversation with Maureen Orth that you said “we” when referring to Catholics, so clearly you feel an affinity. Would you consider yourself culturally Catholic?
A: I would say so, yeah. Well, you know, you live in Rome, it’s the city of the Vatican, you go to nun school. My grandmother was religious. The other grandparents had died, so I only met my grandmother, who was very respectful and went to church every Sunday. And my aunt, we were very close to my aunt. I don’t think she went to church every Sunday, but she might have watched Sunday Mass on television. And in Italy, whatever happens in the world, every newspaper [reports] the Pope’s opinion. Every newspaper in Italy, even a newspaper that isn’t linked with the Vatican, they would say, “And the Pope comments about Gaza.” “‘The Pope comments about the election in America.” … So it’s always present.
Q: In addition to your acting career, you’re well known for Mama Farm, your working agricultural concern on Long Island, as well as your research in animal behaviour. I couldn’t help but think of that when I was watching Conclave, wondering whether part of what distinguishes us as humans is our need for rites and rituals.
A: We don’t know if animals ritualise. We don’t even know if they have religions. We don’t know about that.
Q: But all the rules and traditions that are at the core of the debates in Conclave, they’re all man-made. With the emphasis on “man”.
A: Yes, man-made. … I didn’t play [Sister Agnes] as a person who considers herself lesser than men. Sister Agnes has a lot of authority, sometimes even more authority than the cardinals. Also, she doesn’t speak. She chose [to be a nun] out of a traditional Catholic position, where you say, “I don’t have to speak, I don’t have to be an agent of power, I have power within me because God is in me.”
When I went to [Catholic] school, the nuns were not submissive at all. … My mom … was very liberated in comparison to my aunt or other members of my family, who were traditional housewives. I grew up in the ‘50s. So the nuns and my mom were at the same level. They followed their passion, they chose their destiny. Mother had four children, and it was really difficult to be an actress and have four children, but she still decided that [acting] was her passion, she called it her calling.
I asked [my favourite nun] when she decided to be a nun, how the family reacted. “Oh,” she said, “my mother cried and cried and cried because my mother wanted to be a grandmother.” … [Her mother] said, “Why don’t you just go to church and pray and be as religious as you want?” But she said it was a calling. She used exactly the same words as my mom.
Q: Both are a form of autonomy.
A: I saw [that kind of autonomy] sometimes in some members of the family, like my mom, but it wasn’t common. … So I felt confident to play this role that necessitated a lot of authority. Not only did they have authority because they don’t have to take care of the family and all that, and they can run the school [and] pray, but also they don’t have to be in the political brawl.
[In Conclave], you see the cardinals falling [prey to] ambition, lying, trying to get ahead. … But I think the essence of the film is about doubt. And [director Edward Berger] celebrates doubt. … I think that Sister Agnes, because she doesn’t have the political power to elect and decide, she can live in that doubt, in that mystery, that gives her a moral authority.
Q: Going back to your connection with animals, in your research and on the farm …
A: Talk about mystery and doubts. I mean, do they feel? It’s your sixth sense that tells you they reason, they feel. Yesterday I was at home and my assistant came with the car, but he was staying in the car. I don’t know [why], maybe he was on a phone call or something. I saw it through the window and I also thought, “What’s he waiting for?” But I was busy getting ready. My dog ran to the door. She didn’t see that he was in the car. So she ran to every door thinking, “He might be here. No, no, I made a mistake, he might be here. Maybe he’s there. No, the car is here. Where is he?” I could see all the reasoning, working it out, looking everywhere. … I thought maybe I should do an experiment and have people come that she’s happy to see, and have them wave from the car and then [not] come. And see if she’s going to search for them. I have to talk to my professor and see how you can [create an] experiment to really prove that she’s thinking, she’s reasoning.
Q: Does your animal research make you look at humans differently? Do you see humans more as animals now?
A: No, no, not really. I’m really interested in animals. I don’t study animals to understand humans.
Q: But, and again this circles back to the movie, sometimes we do things and we can’t explain why.
A: It’s complicated. I don’t know how to make this leap from trying to understand if an animal is just stimulus-response, stimulus-response, which is proven to be [false] because they’re able to do much more than that. The study of ethology has proved it. … [But] I don’t study to say, “Ah, that means we have … .” I don’t do that.
Nonverbal communication is my [interest]. With animals, there is nonverbal communication. I mean, my dog understands a few words. And I train dogs for the blind, so they learn a lot of commands. They learn a lot of words, but they also learn more gestures.
But nonverbal communication - I mean, that’s Sister Agnes, if you want. Because I don’t have much dialogue. And yet she’s very present, she has a lot of authority. I always talk about [a particular] scene, and it has nothing to do with acting, it has to do a lot with the visuals of the film and the talent of Edward Berger, but one of the first days I shot the film, he had the camera up very high and he just filmed the movement of the crowd. The nuns enter and they walk like a school of fish to a destination, probably the kitchen. And the men break out and talk, and I just thought, look at that. There’s no words, and Edward is able, in one image, like a painter, to [convey] the hierarchy.
Q: When you look back to your work with an auteur like David Lynch, do you think there’s a male gaze?
A: I don’t know that there’s a male gaze. There’s a human gaze. The big directors, I think they overcome their masculinity to see the common denominator in the human. As soon as I say that came to mind Liv Ullmann. I have to tell you this episode. We were at the Berlin Film Festival, and I think Ingmar Bergman had just died or they were doing a retrospective. There was some celebration of Ingmar Bergman. And Liv Ullmann did my mom’s last film, Autumn Sonata, directed by Ingmar. So we went to present the film together. … [Liv] said that Mother thought the film had a lot of male gaze, because it was accusatory of women having a career. Because my mother played a very successful pianist who goes to visit her daughter, and the daughter accuses her, saying, “See what you’ve done to us?”
And in one famous scene, where Liv Ullmann tells my mom, who played her mother, [about] all the neglect, Liv had a big monologue. So they started with the monologue on Liv. And then there were reaction shots of Mama. When it came to the reverse shot [of] Mama, Ingmar said, “I want you to slightly come apart, realise what you’ve done, you’ve destroyed your family.” Mama said, “Absolutely not.” He said, “Well, how would you react if your daughter told you that?” “I’d slap her in the face and say, ‘You live your life.’” Liv said, “Nobody has ever talked to Ingmar Bergman like that.
I don’t know if David had a male gaze in Blue Velvet. I don’t think so. This was a woman who was abused.
Q: The most memorable scene in Blue Velvet was when your character, Dorothy, emerges totally naked to plead with Kyle MacLachlan’s character for help. A lot of reviewers felt it was gratuitous and unfair to you as an actress.
A: David told me that what he wanted from that scene was - something happened to him when he was a little boy and he came home with his brother and they saw in the street a naked woman walking. And they burst into tears. He said, “I immediately knew that something very wrong had happened. I didn’t get excited, I didn’t laugh. I want that. I want you to walk naked in the street and for everybody to see the horror.” I thought of the photo by Nick Ut, of the little girl who had been napalmed [in Vietnam]. She’s completely exposed. … That gesture became controversial and I wished I had thought of something else, but I didn’t. I still think I’m right. But I don’t think it was exploitive of David, or [an example of] the male gaze. I think it was important that it was more complicated.
Q: You referred to your ethology professor earlier. It sounds like you’re still studying.
A: Well, I have the farm, I’m still managing the farm. I just signed up for an ornithology course in January. Because I’m in the theatre until the end of [2024].
Q: What will you do away from the farm for that long?
A: I know, it’s terrible. This is my last show. I don’t want to go away from home. I feel terrible. I have to leave next week and already I’m not sleeping. My children, my grandchildren, [when I’m home] I see them all. When I’m away, I worry. A lot can happen in two months. One grandchild gets Covid, another one gets a fever. Yesterday a grandchild was running and a big vase fell right on his mouth. His front teeth are now moving. So, yeah, I want to be there. I don’t want to be away.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
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