Isabella Rossellini defies definition.
Some might know her as the beguiling star of David Lynch’s classic neo-noir Blue Velvet. Others might know her as a fashion icon and Vogue cover model, or as the daughter of two cinematic greats, Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini and Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman. But Rossellini has never limited herself to one industry or category. As an artist, she has constantly experimented with new modes and mediums — and she masters everything she attempts with brilliant charm.
Take, for instance, Green Porno — a series of short films Rossellini created in 2008 while earning a Master’s in Animal Behavior and Conservation at New York City’s Hunter College. Each short features her in a different animal costume as she mobilizes her biological expertise and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to enlighten the viewer on different species’ reproductive techniques.
“When you talk about sex, it’s easy to make people laugh,” Rossellini joked during a phone interview with Ampersand earlier this month.
Next week, Rossellini will bring her new project, Link Link Circus, to The Broad Stage in Los Angeles. This time, she says she wants to tackle animal cognition — or rather, she wants to help people understand the ways in which human and animal intelligence are linked, while also giving them a good time.
“I thought, well, this time around, I’ll do it like a little circus — we’ll have toys, we’ll have puppeteers, and we’ll have a trained dog,” she said. “Although we speak about something maybe less easily fun than sex — we talk about intelligence, feeling, cognition — I want it to be entertaining. And that’s why I presented it in the form of a little circus.”
During a long and freewheeling chat, Rossellini revealed what she’s learned about animal behavior in the course of creating the show and why her family wasn’t as surprised by her scientific studies as her fans might have been. With her characteristic candor, she also opened up to Ampersand about her career as a model and actress and spoke to how those industries have changed over the years, allowing women more agency.
What is Link Link Circus?
I want to be an entertainer, because this is what I have been all my life, but I want my muse — my material of inspiration — to be the science of animal behavior. And I’ve done a series of films and a monologue that was called Green Porno. It was about reproduction and seduction techniques that animals have (…) and it was very successful, comical, people laughed a lot.
I wanted my next monologue, Link Link Circus, to be about the question, “Do animals feel and think?” There’s a lot of controversy about it and I wanted to talk about it. This is what I started doing after university.
You’ve said before that your family was a bit surprised when you decided to become a model and an actress because, as a child, you were so interested in animals and zoology.
[My family] wasn’t surprised so much that I was a model — they were [also] not surprised when I went back to university, and once studying, made films about animals.
A lot of people were surprised, they’d say [referring to her film series Green Porno] (…) “Why does she want to be a worm? Or, how can she play a fly? She has been on the cover of Vogue! What is this?” But my family wasn’t surprised. They said, “Oh, we’re not surprised she does that.” [laughs]
Photo courtesy of Jody Shapiro
How did you decide to bring your art and your studies together for Link Link Circus?
In my twenties, after I finished high school, I wanted to study animals, but the science of animal behavior is pretty recent. It started before the Second World War, but then there was the war and then it was picked up after the war. But most of it was done in English, and at the time I didn’t really speak very good English. I didn’t feel confident enough to leave my country or to come live in America or go to England, to Oxford.
I considered going to the agricultural school, because, you know, I was interested in mostly farm animals. But at the time, all the small farms in Europe, artisanal farms, were closing and industrial farming was established. So, everybody said, “What? You want to become a farmer when everyone is leaving that? That’s the wrong choice.” So I remained more or less in the family business, which is acting. Modeling came and, and I was delighted to be modeling. And I just decided that animal behavior would remain my hobby, my interest. I read a lot about it, saw all the documentaries, but it stayed a hobby until I became older and I didn’t work anymore as a model and I also worked less as an actress. And all of a sudden, universities offered — even in New York City, where I lived — animal behavior. And so I signed up and finished my master’s degree in my sixties. I’m happy.
Why do you think the idea that humans might be cognitively similar to animals is controversial? Why might it be hard for people to believe or understand that?
Well, you know, I think that evolution is recognized. Although, sometimes in America, some people don’t recognize it, it’s surprising (…) I mean at university, everybody’s taught that evolution is a given, all the science is based on evolution — even the flu vaccine that we have to take every year.
Everybody recognizes that the same bones that form a hand also form the wing of a bat, or the fin of a whale. But when we talk about intelligence — scientists prefer the word “cognition” — people say, “Oh no, only human beings can do that. Animals cannot, they just behave on instinct.” And this was something that was very strongly believed in our world.
[Charles] Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution really shook that. Darwin that said we are linked with animals. (…) He speculated — with this very sentence that I use in the show — that probably there is a difference, but these are differences of “degree, not of kind.” Because of course we recognize [that] we can design rockets and go to the moon, or cure diseases, and animals might do less. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some ability to decide what action to take, or that they can think, “If I do that, what would be the consequences?”
Photo courtesy of Jody Shapiro
Does that inform the way that you raise your chickens and interact with your dog in everyday life?
Definitely, I’m very sensitive to animal welfare and once you recognize that animals are sentient, [that], they’re able to feel and think, it becomes a moral dilemma.
They’ve done experiments with chickens and [it turns out] they can count. They cannot count one, two, three, four, five, but they know that what is more or less. They can estimate quantities. They can recognize individuals.
If a chicken can estimate quantities and recognize each other, are we allowed to keep chickens in a group of 20,000, all living together? Because they probably are stressed to live with an enormous amount of other chickens that they don’t know — like we would be. If we are in a crowd, there is a different feeling for us than if we are with our family at home.
There’s a specific moment in Link Link Circus where you’re talking to your dog, Pan, and holding him like a baby. You address the idea that people might assume you’re acting that way because you’re a woman.
So, I’m talking about the process of domestication and I give the example of the dog. (…) I pick up my dog and start talking to him [imitates cutesie sounds] like we talk to our dogs. And then I go, “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking I’m an old lady, who now has skewed all her maternal instincts to go from the baby to the dog. And it’s pathetic, and it’s typical of old ladies like me — but you’re wrong.”
It’s because of evolution. As we have domesticated the wolf to become the dog, the wolf might have domesticated us — because we are the top predator and yet, when it comes to certain animals, we feel a certain tenderness that prevents us from eating them.
And then the show continues with an example of a study, done by a professor called Eugene Morton — and it’s called, actually, the Morton Law — where it’s speculated that, because we all co-evolved, there are certain tones that are the same in all animals. So, all tones that go from low-to-high express surprise, across species. (…) We evolved an inter-species language to understand each other. And so, when we talk to the dog with a high-pitched voice, we’re using that inter-species language to say to the dog, “You’re my friend, I’m not going to hurt you.” And he would understand the tone.
Do you think that animals perceive gender roles and hierarchies the ways that humans do?
Some animals, they are dominated by males, some are dominated by females. (…) It depends on the animal. Some animals change sex during their lifetime. There are certain fish that are born male and, as they grow older, they become female. There are some animals that have both sexes — male and female. Sex is very difficult to define because, in nature, it can be many things.
There is not a definite hierarchy that says, “The male is always the strongest and is always ruling,” because the male could be teeny-teeny — like spiders, the males are miniscule and the females are very big and eat up the males. And with bees — I’m a beekeeper — the females, they kill the males when they don’t need them.
That’s why it’s so fascinating, because we generally think, “Oh, female, male, mom and dad, family” and “Homosexuality? Hm, unnatural.” But when you go out and see nature, everything exists. It’s very difficult to set up rules, because everything is possible in nature and that’s the wonderment and the surprise that I try to communicate to the audience.
Is there something that you think might surprise people, science-wise?
When I looked for a dog to be on my show, Pan, I wanted [it] to have the signs of domestication (…) a patchy coat, for example. Patchy coats very seldom exist in the wild, but a lot of domestic animals have patchy coats — think of dogs, but also think of cats, cows or goats. And when we look at the wild, cats might have stripes or the buffaloes are brown, antelopes or brown and beige. Patchiness is a sign of the domestication. (…) Floppy years in dogs are also a sign of domestication. In the wild, whether it’s wolves, coyotes or foxes, they have ears sticking up.
So there are things like that, that surprised me when I studied them. And I think that people don’t know [them, either].
Photo courtesy of Jody Shapiro
To return to that moment between you and your dog, Pan, in Link Link — you also address the assumption that you treat him in this sort of maternal way because of your age, because you’re older. Do you think that our perceptions of age and older women have changed since you started your career?
I worked for many years for a company called Lancôme as a model. And then they asked me to leave when I was about 42 because they said that advertisements represent dreams. Even though the client might be in their 40s or 50s, the advertisement represents a dream, it doesn’t represent reality. And so, if women dream to be young, the advertisement has to use young models. That is the rationale they gave me when they didn’t renew my contract.
And then, to my great surprise, about three years ago when I was 63, I was contacted to come back to Lancôme. So I said, “Well, what about the dream? What happened?” Lancôme was losing all their clients in their 50s and 60s, because all of a sudden they couldn’t identify with the representation of themselves in younger ladies. So they wanted me back, and I am delighted.
At the beginning, they were very hesitant and I just had a public relations role. But now, I am in the advertisement campaign (…) and I am even more delighted, because now we know for sure that it’s not true that if a woman of a certain age represents a product, that product is not bought.
Have you been able to have any input in how you’re represented in the campaign?
Definitely, yes, some. For example, we talked about not retouching the photos — you know, they’d photograph me and then they retouch it and make me young again (…) so then, why have me?
And then also, it’s not only the retouching, it’s also the photographer. It’s important that we choose a photographer who’s interested in portraying emotion, not just beautiful eyes, a beautiful nose, and a beautiful mouth. (…)
It’s not only the retouching, but who you work with, or what kind of makeup, or what kind of clothes you use. You know, I always said, “I want to be dressed like a woman dresses at my age, I don’t want to have a low-cut dress. I don’t want to be sexy.”
Photo courtesy of Jody Shapiro
Do you feel like you’ve been able to speak up more about how you want your image to be portrayed in advertisements, in films, on television?
Oh definitely, definitely. Everybody, not just me. More women can speak up about what they want now, more now than before.
Before models didn’t have their name—we were anonymous, nobody knew anybody. When you look at Lancôme campaigns nowadays, it’s Julia Roberts, Kate Winslet, Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz — all women that represent strength, energy, defining their life. And Lancôme wants to associate themselves with these values. That’s why they choose them.
In the ‘80s, (…) the woman was just, “be beautiful and shut up” — and that’s what was represented as the “perfect woman.”
Definitely it has evolved, and for the better, it seems to me.
What do you hope people will take away from Link Link Circus?
I always say I want them to have a laugh, and then, “Oh, I didn’t know that.”
Basically to have these two reactions of laughter and being entertained in the hour and 20 minutes I’m on stage, [and] to leave with a sense that nature is really interesting. It’s a wonderment.
Isabella Rossellini will be speaking at USC, in Bovard Auditorium, on January 24 at 7 p.m. Reserve a seat here.
Blue Velvet (1986), starring Rossellini and directed by David Lynch, will be screening at the Ray Stark Theater at USC on January 22. RSVP here.
Link Link Circus plays at The Broad Stage in Santa Monica on January 25, 26, and 27. Tickets and information here.