TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Next up on our Classic Films and Movie Icons series is an interview from our archive with Isabella Rossellini. She's the daughter of two film icons, actor Ingrid Bergman and the Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini. She first became known as a fashion model. After starring in "Blue Velvet" with Dennis Hopper, she became known for her acting. The movie became a cult classic, and David Lynch was nominated for an Oscar for directing. I spoke with Isabella Rossellini in 1997.
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GROSS: I want to ask you about "Blue Velvet." You were so wonderful in that film.
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: Thank you.
GROSS: You played a nightclub singer who is exotic and mesmerizing, but is in a weird and abusive relationship with a psycho played by Dennis Hopper.
ROSSELLINI: Yes.
GROSS: How did you get the part, and what interested you in this part?
ROSSELLINI: To me, it was the only time that I could portrayed a battered woman and a Stockholm syndrome where it was - it's very hard for a victim to recognize that they're a victim. Generally a victim feels guilty and feels and does anything to please the person who's torturing them. And it's an absolute strange twist that our mind gives us. And, you know, it is a recognized syndrome on kidnapped people or raped victims. And I thought it was quite interesting to play that part. And that's what appealed me for the role. It was a wonderful way to portray sexuality and the darkness of it. And I played a femme fatale that was - was a femme fatale just because she was kind of beautiful, and she was singing, and she had the features of somebody beautiful, but yet she was completely destroyed inside. And that was a pretty good role, you know.
Most of the time the femme fatales are portrayed as women who know exactly what they want and completely, and sex is portrayed as something that you don't - that you go out there and choose for yourself. But we know that the reality is often we, you know, we're - we just have to - it just happens to us. And then we don't know what to do with it, what to make of it. And I thought that this woman, who had so many torment in her mind, became the victim of the abuse that she - because they - she was raped and beaten by the character of Dennis Hopper, so that when she did get the first blow, the first punch, she would see the star and her tormented thoughts could stop. And that's why she asked to be beaten.
GROSS: You know, an interesting thing you say about making this movie in your memoir is that when you were rehearsing, you didn't have to wear the makeup. You didn't have to wear the clothes, but you had to have the red fingernail polish on...
ROSSELLINI: Yes.
GROSS: ...Otherwise you just couldn't do the part. Why is that?
ROSSELLINI: Well, I think that because a lot of the scenes were nude and a lot of the scenes were rape, and a lot of it was very vulnerable, it was easier for me to play Dorothy, to be someone else. And so even when we rehearsed, since Dorothy used a lot of makeup because I think Dorothy was covering herself up, she used makeup like a mask to mask her, the troubled inside, to make the the lips perfectly red and the eyeshadows perfectly blue. Everything was to mask the fact that she was completely destroyed. So I needed my red nail polish as my hands flew in front of me to give me that sense of cover up that she was so desperately trying to give, and if I would see my hand are not made up, it would be Isabella's hand. And I couldn't be Dorothy.
GROSS: Right. Now, what do you do when you're shooting, like, the scenes with Dennis Hopper? Say, the scenes where he's inhaling this weird...
ROSSELLINI: Yeah.
GROSS: ...In this weird gas that he inhales that turns him on. What do you do in a scene like that to break the tension (laughter)?
ROSSELLINI: Well, Dennis was wonderful. You know, that was the first scene I had done in the film. I just came - the film had started, I think, a week or two, and we came in and David said, you know, we're going to start with that scene because that scene - otherwise we'll be - we'll always be thinking about it, we'll always be worrying about it. So we'll do it on the first day. So we get it over with.
And I couldn't believe that I had to be in front of Dennis Hopper naked and say all this weird thing. I was agonizing, and I asked - I left a little message to Dennis' room saying, can I have breakfast with you? I've never met the man just to have to get to know him a little bit. And he came very annoyed. But, you know, what do you want, to become friends to do that? And he was right. You know, you are acting. You don't have to be friends. But then Dennis and David were so wonderfully protective of me and so wonderfully comical too, that they really released the tension. And it was wonderful to work with them.
GROSS: There's a scene in the movie where you're wandering around the street naked. Tell me about that scene and what you wanted your body to look at. It's not a vanity scene.
ROSSELLINI: No, not at all. I mean, it's - not at all. I, David Lynch told me that when he was a child coming back from school, he saw a naked woman walking in the street. And instead of getting aroused or excited at that sight, he started to cry. It terrified him, and he wanted to convey the same terror. He wanted Dorothy to walk in the street of Wilmington, where we shot the film, naked and convey the same sense of terror instead of the sense of sex appeal. And when he was talking to me, there was a photo of Nick Ut that I remembered, and it was a photo of a young girl in Vietnam. She has been a victim of napalm attack, and her clothes have been completely torn off the body. And she has skin hanging and she's completely naked. And she walks in the street with the arms outstretched and is such a helpless gesture.
And I couldn't think of anything else, that absolute helpless gesture and walking like that. If I would have walked covering my breast or covering myself, it meant that Dorothy still had some sense of pride, still had something in her to protect her. That woman had to have lost everything, and so she had to walk completely exposed. Just saying, help me. And that photo is the photo. I took the gesture from that photo and used it, and I hope that I convey the same sense of despair. That was the thing that I wanted to convey.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Isabella Rossellini in 1997. We'll hear more of my interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS ISAAK SONG, "WICKED GAME")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our Classic Films and Movie Icons series and continue my 1997 interview with Isabella Rossellini. Her father was the Italian neorealist film director Roberto Rossellini, and her mother was actor Ingrid Bergman. Isabella Rossellini grew up in Rome and Paris and moved to New York when she was a teenager. Before establishing herself as an actor, she was a model.
How did you start modeling?
ROSSELLINI: I started modeling by chance. I was 28, and I used to work for the Italian television. I'm Italian originally, but I lived in New York. And socially I've met a wonderful photographer called Bruce Weber, who wanted to photograph me. And I thought, oh, that'd be fun. So I can maybe buy the issue of that magazine all done up and save it to show it to my grandchildren. And I would be an old bag and say, look. I looked pretty. I was photographed once.
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROSSELLINI: But then from Bruce photo, I really literally had an overnight success. And within a month I was in Richard Avedon's studio working basically every day, having covers. And my life completely changed. And I became a model and learned to love it.
GROSS: You've been photographed by many great photographers. What are some of the different ways they get you to respond to the camera? Do you feel like you respond to the camera differently depending on who the photographer is?
ROSSELLINI: Oh, definitely. There is definitely a style of posing. I have seen very, very beautiful girl who didn't have a great career. And somebody else who maybe was a little bit - they're always beautiful. The common denominator among models is they are beautiful, but some of them are odd-looking or there is something strange. They're not classical beauty, and yet they have bigger careers just because there is an art in modeling. There is a know-how. And the style of posing also slightly changes with a different photographer. It can be more emphatic and artificial, or it can be real, real and real acting. And you learn that as you go along and do it.
GROSS: So are there things that photographers would actually tell you to do or tell you to think about that would help?
ROSSELLINI: Well, in my book I give the example with Richard Avedon. He was the first one - see; I was terribly spoiled. My first experience was with Bruce Weber followed by Richard Avedon, and they taught me. I think I couldn't have had a better school. I remember when I was posing, I thought I just had to be obedient and wear the clothes and make sure I wasn't going to wrinkle them up and mess them up. And I sat there and just obediently just wait for every instruction. Turn a little bit left, turn a little bit right - look up, look down. And I just obeyed. And Avedon would just look at me and say, can you think of something? And then when I thought of something, he'd say, no, change your thought. I don't like what you're thinking.
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROSSELLINI: One day I said, what is he saying? He doesn't know what I'm thinking. So I went back to a thought I had and he caught me immediately. He said, no, no, I told you, I don't like what you're thinking. Change your thought. And I think you could - if you concentrate, there is something that emanates through you, and that's what the great photographer photographs. The fact that you're - you know, Diana Vreeland I quote in my book saying, there is no beauty without emotion. And I think that that's what is the responsibility of a model. It isn't so much to look beautiful. That mostly is genetic, you know, you're born like that. But you have to show your emotions. That's what makes a great photo.
GROSS: Now, is this something you think about when you're making movies, too?
ROSSELLINI: Yes, it is. That's why I always say that it isn't - you know, people always differentiate between the two jobs as being so categorically different, modeling and acting. And they are instead - there's a lot of it in common. What you don't have in common is that you don't have a dialogue when you're a model. You don't have to react to another actor. Sometimes you react to the photographer in the same way an actor would respond to the partner in front. So, you know, but there are a lot of similarities. And in terms of the feeling that rises from within and changes your expression in your face and your eyes, that is exactly the same for modeling and acting.
GROSS: How much of an emphasis on acting have you wanted to have in your career?
ROSSELLINI: I guess when I was a teenager I wanted to do something different than acting, because not only my mother was such a great established actress and adored, but everybody else in my family was very successful, including my father - was a great filmmaker. And then when I became a model, I thought there must have been some similarities with acting. And I became curious about acting. I kind of loved modeling unexpectedly because I thought, like everybody else, that it was a stupid job (laughter). I had this stereotype in my head.
So then I tentatively started to take classes. And then I got some parts and had the courage to do them, which isn't easy when you come from a family that has been so glorified in films. I like acting, but I think I like it somewhat less than my mother (laughter). My mother just adored it, lived for it, and I don't. I like it. I like it a lot. But I don't have the same - I think my mother liked acting most and above all.
GROSS: When you were growing up with your parents, Ingrid Bergman and the film director Roberto Rossellini, did you love movies? Were movies a big part of your life?
ROSSELLINI: No, not very much. Strangely enough, no, they weren't. My father and mother were very, very interested in other things - in films as well, but a lot of other things, especially my father. And I've always assumed that any director would be interested in politics, in religion, in science, in any other subject where they would get inspiration to do their films. It was only later in life that I discovered that often directors are just film buffs. They don't know anything else but films (laughter). That was very surprising to me.
GROSS: You write in your memoir that your mother came out of Hollywood. And she had, you know, a Hollywood sense of entertainment. She liked entertainment whereas your father, the famous neorealist director, had a much more kind of serious artistic approach to movies. Do you feel that you grew up and that he didn't care much about, quote, "light entertainment"? Do you feel that you grew up with an integrated sense of both, you know, film as a higher art and as an entertainment?
ROSSELLINI: I think so. I think I'm more indulgent to - you know, if I see a film that - it's silly but I've enjoyed looking at it, I praise it. And as I praised films that make me think or or make me cry. And yet I still am convinced that when you are - you see; my father was really a filmmaker that innovated cinema. He had to be completely - I don't - I think you need that energy of faith and the absolute belief in your ideas. If you are like me, too democratic and too open, I don't think you can assert yourself or you can break grounds. You know, often, I found out that that the great artists are really the people that really are breaking grounds. They are pretty obsessive (laughter) - not all of them but some of them.
GROSS: I want to thank you so much for talking with us.
ROSSELLINI: Thank you so much for having me.
GROSS: My interview with Isabella Rossellini was recorded in 1997. Our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons, continues through Labor Day. Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of singer Dinah Washington on the centennial of her birth. This is FRESH AIR.
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