Italian actress Isabella Rossellini will receive the European Achievement in World Cinema award, a lifetime achievement honor, at this year’s European Film Awards.
The Italian-American star, daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, was a successful fashion model — famously for French cosmetics brand Lancôme — before shifting into acting. Her first leading role came in the Taviani brothers’ drama The Meadow (1979), but her international breakout was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) in which she played the mysterious and tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens. The performance, in which Rossellini also sang the film’s titular tune, won her the Independent Spirit Award for best female lead.
Over the next 4 decades, Rossellini carved out a unique career in cinema, moving between big-budget features — Robert Zemeckis’s Death Becomes Her (1992), Peter Weir’s Fearless (1993) — and independent auteur films, working with Peter Greenaway (The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003)), Guy Maddin (2006’s Brand Upon the Brain!), Marjane Satrapi (Chicken with Plums (2011)), and Alice Rohrwacher (2023’s La chimera). She was Emmy-nominated for a recurring role on Chicago Hope and appeared in episodes of Alias, 30 Rock, and as herself in an episode of Friends (The One With Frank Jr.).
Most recently, Rossellini appears as a nosy nun in Edward Berger’s buzzy awards favorite Conclave.
Rossellini stepped behind the camera herself for Green Porno, Seduce Me, and Mammas, a series of comical shorts exploring the sex lives of animals, in which she played everything from a horny firefly to a motherly worm.
Announcing the lifetime achievement award, the European Film Academy said the honor ” serves as a reminder of the depth and breadth of [Rossellini’s] talent that continues to shape the landscape of world cinema.”
When Lancôme dropped her as a model when she turned 40, Rossellini launched her own cosmetics brand, Manifesto. Lancôme hired her again in 2018, aged 65, as a spokeswoman to “promote inclusiveness and fight against ageism” in the industry.
Along the way, Rossellini also earned a master’s degree in Animal Behaviour and Conservation from Hunter College in New York and an honorary PhD from the science faculty at the University of Quebec at Montreal. She runs her own organic farm, Mama Farm, in Brookhaven.
Rossellini will be honored at the 37th European Film Awards in Lucerne, Switzerland, on December 7.
