Isabella Rossellini on Hollywood Ageism, Playing a Scene-Stealing Nun in ‘Conclave,’ and Becoming a Long Island Farmer

Isabella Rossellini: From Hollywood to Sustainable Farming

Isabella Rossellini puts down her fork, straightens her back and shows me how she nailed a pivotal moment in her new movie, “Conclave,” a Vatican-set thriller that unfolds a world away from her 28-acre Long Island farm where we’re having lunch. In the scene, Rossellini’s character, a nun named Sister Agnes, is navigating a darkened hallway, trying to remain undetected, when she glimpses something mysterious unfolding a few feet in front of her.

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The Power of Silence: Sister Agnes in “Conclave”

In “Conclave,” Sister Agnes tends to the fraternity of cardinals gathered to choose the next pope. She is often seen puttering around the perimeter of the male-dominated deliberations, but she’s rarely heard. That required Rossellini to convey reservoirs of suspicion with just a look or a gesture. Yet with only a few lines, she nearly steals the movie from heavyweights Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci, who chatter and bluster and debate as they outmaneuver each other for control of the Catholic Church.

A Difficult Role to Nail

“It’s a very difficult role to nail,” says Edward Berger, the film’s director. “Because you need that special extra something that not a lot of people have, and you need an actor who has confidence in their quietness. It would be easy to do too much. But Isabella is that rare person who can deliver a masterful performance with minimal expression.”

Empowering Sister Agnes

And make no mistake, Sister Agnes knows all. She may have been marginalized by a patriarchal system, but she is always a few steps ahead of the men who are grasping for the papal ring. “She hasn’t been squashed down,” says Rossellini. “She may have taken a vow of silence, but she’s not subservient. She’s very wise.”

A Career Resurgence and a Passion for Sustainable Farming

In films like “Conclave” and last spring’s “La Chimera,” where she played a Miss Havisham-like matriarch, the 72-year-old Rossellini has reestablished herself as an arresting character actress, playing the kind of meaty parts that dried up when she reached middle age. But even as she’s enjoying a career resurgence, her heart lies here at Mama Farm, a bucolic getaway that she purchased in 2013. It’s where she harvests honey, grows vegetables from heritage seeds and oversees a predominantly female menagerie of goats, sheep and chickens.

A Hard-Won Contentment

Rossellini has also recently opened a low-key bed-and-breakfast on the property, which is where we’re sitting on a sun porch, eating chicken salad and drinking kombucha as she tells me that this is “the happiest” she’s been. But it’s a hard-won contentment — one that required a reinvention after she was shunted aside by Hollywood and the modeling world after she entered her 40s.

From Model to Filmmaker: Isabella’s Journey

Rossellini went back to school, finishing her undergraduate degree at NYU and then getting a master’s in animal behavior from Hunter College. She used that expertise to write, direct and star in “Green Porno,” a series of arty, educational and hilarious webisodes that debuted in 2008 and explored the mating rituals of everything from snails to sea lions over three seasons. Rossellini, who plays all the animals with a Buster Keaton physicality, donned elaborate costumes to demonstrate how a whale maintains an erection or anchovies enjoy ocean-based orgies.

Using Humor to Educate

“It’s my concession to commercialism,” Rossellini says of the focus on carnal matters. “If I made a video about teeth or mandible structure, nobody would watch it. But if you say ‘penis’ or ‘vagina,’ people start listening.” She’s hoping to film another season of “Green Porno,” this one about the domestication of animals, but hasn’t figured out how to make it engaging. “I want it to be humorous,” she says. “But it’s easier to get people to laugh about sex.”

Love, Loss, and Resilience

Rossellini has a European ease with eroticism. On-screen, she appeared completely nude in “Blue Velvet,” wandering through a suburban neighborhood, badly bruised and desperate for help. To convey her character’s torment, Rossellini held her arms by her side like wounded wings, mirroring the Nick Ut war photo of the burned Vietnamese girl, naked and wailing in agony after a napalm attack. “Her gesture was so helpless,” Rossellini recalls.

Embracing Aging and Overcoming Setbacks

When she worked on “Death Becomes Her,” playing a socialite with the secret to eternal youth, she used a body double for a scene in which her character emerges from a swimming pool naked save for some high heel shoes. Rossellini told the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis, that she didn’t mind doing nudity, but she felt she wasn’t statuesque enough for that moment. When it came time to shoot the sequence, she insisted on meeting the woman who would be supplying her backside. She wanted to deliver a message. “I went up to my double and I said, ‘I will stay here in my trailer. If you need me, just let me know and I’ll come out and be here with you.’ I was there like a mother saying, ‘I’m here to protect you.'”

A Life of Contrasts: Hollywood and Sustainable Farming

When I get off the train in Patchogue, an unassuming town near the Fire Island ferry, where I’m meeting Rossellini on a cloudy July morning, she’s standing beside a weathered Lexus SUV. Rossellini is dressed casually, wearing pants and a knit shirt, but she still looks regal and glamorous, commanding her section of the parking lot as she would a runway. It’s impossible not to be reminded of her mother, Ingrid Bergman, the screen icon who captivated Humphrey Bogart and bedeviled Cary Grant. And as she drives me through the town center and down a long, tree-lined driveway, the conversation moves seamlessly between her life as both a movie star and the daughter of film legends (her father was neorealist auteur Roberto Rossellini) and her current gig as a farmer.

A Return to Rome: Shooting “Conclave”

Shooting “Conclave” in Rome gave Rossellini the opportunity to return to the city where she grew up. It also allowed her to play tour guide. One night she took Lithgow and Tucci to L’Eau Vive, a French restaurant with frescoed ceilings that is run by Carmelite nuns. “I’d never been to any place like it,” says Tucci, who hosts a travel show about Italy’s cuisine. “As you eat, they sing hymns.”

A Legacy of Fame and Resilience

The restaurant was a favorite of Bergman’s when she lived in Italy during her seven-year marriage to Roberto Rossellini. “She liked it because the nuns didn’t really know who she was and she was not bothered there,” Rossellini remembers. “Usually, when you’d be with Mama in a restaurant, people would keep interrupting the conversation we were having to get an autograph.” Bergman endured a blistering level of scrutiny after meeting and having an affair with Rossellini’s father on the set of 1950’s “Stromboli.” She was married at the time, and when news broke that she was pregnant with Rossellini’s child, the blowback was ferocious. She was drummed out of the movie business and denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Six years later, she would be welcomed back to Hollywood, going on to win Oscars for “Anastasia” and “Murder on the Orient Express,” but her experience stayed with her daughter.

Love, Loss, and Resilience

“She followed her heart, but she also paid a terrible price for being so emancipated,” Rossellini says. “It’s complicated.” Rossellini’s heart often led her to high-profile directors. She was married to Martin Scorsese for four years, living with the filmmaker as he labored over “Raging Bull.” Then, in the 1980s and early ’90s, she was involved with David Lynch as they worked together on “Blue Velvet” and “Wild at Heart.” She stays in touch with both men, seeing Lynch from time to time during visits to L.A. Rossellini admits that the breakups hurt, and she wishes she’d been able to keep collaborating with the “Twin Peaks” director, but she doesn’t have any lingering resentment over how things ended.

Embracing Aging and Overcoming Setbacks

“We have so much history and so much affection. If you concentrate on that, you’ll be happier,” she says. “I had marvelous relationships with them. I think David and Marty love me, and I love them. There’s a part of you that never really stops being in love with them. You’re not in love in the sense that you want to be together, but you still care deeply about them. How could you not?”

A Return to Lancôme and Hollywood

And Hollywood has come back around, with Rossellini appearing regularly in films like “Spaceman,” alongside Adam Sandler; “Joy,” where she went toe-to-toe with Jennifer Lawrence; and “Incredibles 2,” where her cosmopolitan air landed her the role of the Ambassador. “For some reason, they like me again,” she says. But she also knows how fleeting it all is. In her 1997 memoir, “Some of Me,” Rossellini writes about her parents’ cinematic legacies, asking, “Is being remembered a kind of antidote to death? Is fame a sort of eternity?” Lately, she’s discovered that even legends have a shelf life.

A Legacy of Sustainability

“I used to be introduced as ‘Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini’s daughter,’ and it bothered me, because I would think, ‘I am my own person.’ But now, the younger generation doesn’t know them, and it breaks my heart. Their reputations outlived them, but fame is very brief.” Instead of worrying about extending her time in the spotlight, Rossellini is considering ways to ensure that what she’s built here on Long Island outlasts her. The bed-and-breakfast provides revenue, and the farm sells organic eggs, honey, wool and vegetables. She plans to set aside money so Mama Farm can continue after she’s gone, but she worries there won’t be enough.

A Passion for Sustainable Farming

“If I die tomorrow, it will be fine,” she says. “If I last for 20 years, it could be a problem.”

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

SDGs Addressed:

1. SDG 5: Gender Equality
2. SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
3. SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
4. SDG 15: Life on Land

Specific Targets:

• SDG 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life
• SDG 8.5: By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
• SDG 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources
• SDG 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity, and protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species

Indicators:

• Indicator for SDG 5.5: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments and local governments
• Indicator for SDG 8.5: Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age group, and persons with disabilities
• Indicator for SDG 12.2: Domestic material consumption per capita, by type of resource
• Indicator for SDG 15.5: Red List Index, which measures trends in the survival of species

Analysis:

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

The issues highlighted in the article are connected to the following SDGs:

• SDG 5: Gender Equality – The article discusses Isabella Rossellini’s portrayal of a nun who is marginalized in a male-dominated environment, highlighting the need for equal opportunities for women in decision-making roles.
• SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth – The article mentions Isabella Rossellini’s career setbacks and her journey to find new and challenging opportunities, emphasizing the importance of full and productive employment for all.
• SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production – The article mentions Isabella Rossellini’s farm, where she practices sustainable agriculture and sells organic products, promoting responsible consumption and production.
• SDG 15: Life on Land – The article discusses Isabella Rossellini’s farm and her efforts to preserve and protect the natural habitat and biodiversity on her land.

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

Based on the article’s content, the following specific targets can be identified:

• SDG 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life.
• SDG 8.5: By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.
• SDG 12.2: By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.
• SDG 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity, and protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

The article does not explicitly mention any indicators. However, based on the identified targets, the following indicators can be used to measure progress:

• Indicator for SDG 5.5: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments and local governments – This indicator can measure the progress towards ensuring women’s full and effective participation in decision-making roles.
• Indicator for SDG 8.5: Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age group, and persons with disabilities – This indicator can measure progress towards achieving equal pay for work of equal value.
• Indicator for SDG 12.2: Domestic material consumption per capita, by type of resource – This indicator can measure progress towards sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.
• Indicator for SDG 15.5: Red List Index – This indicator measures trends in the survival of species and can be used to assess progress in protecting and preventing the extinction of threatened species.

Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: variety.com