Isabella Rossellini’s Best Performances, Ranked

Isabella Rossellini was a nepo baby before we were all talking about nepo babies. The incredibly elegant actress was born in Rome in 1952 to Ingrid Bergman, who reached icon status starring opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, and Roberto Rossellini, the famous neorealist film director of Rome, Open City. The two had an affair while Bergman was still married, and the resulting pregnancy led to Bergman being denounced on the floor of the US Senate, although the pair were married by the time Isabella and her twin sister were born.

At 19, she went to New York to attend college, also doing some work for RAI, an Italian television station, which is how she met Martin Scorsese, who she’d been tasked with interviewing. She married Scorsese in 1979, but wasn’t cast in her first English-language role until 1982. She and Scorsese divorced in 1982, and she went on to have relationships with David Lynch and Gary Oldman, all the while building up an impressive film portfolio and working steadily as a model. She’s an inspiring activist, having worked for the Wildlife Conservation Network and had extensive involvement with film preservation. While she’s also a fascinating director in her own right, let’s count down her best performances.

11

White Nights (1985)

White Nights

Release Date

November 22, 1985

Runtime

136 minutes

Writers

Eric Hughes

Producers

William S. Gilmore

Gregory Hines

Raymond Greenwood
Mikhail Baryshnikov

Nikolai ‘Kolya’ Rodchenko
Jerzy Skolimowski

Colonel Chaiko

Rossellini’s international debut was in 1985 with the musical drama starring dance heavyweights Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines. The film is mostly set in a Leningrad summer, hence the long days referenced in the title. Baryshnikov plays Rodchenko, a ballet dancer attempting to defect from the Soviet Union, while Hines plays Greenwood, a tap dancer defecting to the USSR.

While their relationship is initially one of deep suspicion, the two men become friends. Rossellini plays Darya, Greenwood’s wife, and once she falls pregnant, Greenwood begins to realize that he wants to get his family out of the USSR. An escape plot is hatched involving Rodchenko and his former lover, played by Helen Mirren, and Greenwood ends up staying behind to ensure the others’ safety. It wasn’t a huge role for Rossellini, but enough to put her on the map.

10

Immortal Beloved (1994)

Immortal Beloved

Release Date

December 16, 1994

Runtime

121 minutes

Director

Bernard Rose

Jeroen Krabbé

Anton Felix Schindler
Isabella Rossellini

Anna Marie Erdödy
Johanna ter Steege

Johanna Reiss

Rossellini has the kind of face that begs to be cast in a period drama, and here she played Anna-Maria Erdödy, a noblewoman who took Beethoven (Gary Oldman) into her home after he lost his hearing and was having difficulty conducting anymore, suffering humiliation at the hands of audiences. Erdödy denies being the titular ‘immortal beloved’ that Beethoven’s friend is trying to track down after his death, given that that is who he has willed his entire estate to. She does admit that they had an affair, however, when she was consumed with grief over her son’s death. She is her typical graceful self in the film, and after meeting Oldman on the set, they were together for the next three years, reportedly coming close to marriage.

9

The Innocent (1993)

The Innocent

3.5
/5

Release Date

September 16, 1993

Runtime

119 minutes

Director

John Schlesinger

Writers

Ian McEwan

Producers

Chris Sievernich, Norma Heyman

John Schlesinger directed this 1993 adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, which stars Rossellini as a German woman, Maria, caught between an English spy (Anthony Hopkins) and an American one (Campbell Scott). The film is set during the Cold War, in 1950s Berlin, and takes its inspiration from the real-life joint spy mission between the U.K. and the U.S., Operation Gold, which saw a tunnel built under the Russian sector of the city to spy on the Soviet forces. The complexities of the mission and the love triangle echo each other with Hitchcockian smoke and mirrors, and Rossellini is an echo of her mother in Casablanca, keeping her cards close to her chest, wearing trench coats, saying farewell at airports shrouded in mist.

8

Roger Dodger (2002)

Roger Dodger

Release Date

May 9, 2002

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Dylan Kidd

Jesse Eisenberg made his 2002 film debut as Nick, nephew to the dastardly, womanizing Roger (Campbell Scott), who has just been dumped by Joyce (Rossellini), who also happens to be his boss. Roger decides that he will spend the weekend teaching Nick how to pick up women, which in no way works out according to his plan.

Nick begins the film looking up to Roger and his manipulative ways, but by the film’s end, the audience is unsure whether that holds true after seeing the realities of Roger’s behavior. Rossellini makes an impression as self-confident ad executive Joyce, who shows the first chink in Roger’s armor by being unwilling to put up with his childish behavior.

7

Big Night (1996)

Big Night

Release Date

September 20, 1996

Runtime

107 Minutes

Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub starred in what is known as one of the best restaurant movies ever, Big Night. Primo and Secondo, two Italian brothers in the ’50s, have one night to prove that their Jersey Shore restaurant, Paradise, can be a success. Intrigue enters the picture in the form of Gabriella (Rossellini), the wife of a fellow restaurateur, Pascal, with whom the brothers have a contentious relationship.

Pascal has promised that he will send the famed singer Louis Prima to dine at Paradise, but Pascal doesn’t know that Gabriella is having an affair with Secondo. Sneaking around in the kitchen with Secondo, sporting a ’50s pixie cut and some gorgeous dresses, Rossellini is in her element.

6

The Saddest Music in the World (2003)

The Saddest Music in the World

Release Date

September 17, 2003

Runtime

100 minutes

Director

Guy Maddin

Isabella Rossellini

Lady Helen Port-Huntley
Mark McKinney

Chester Kent
Maria de Medeiros

Narcissa

Canadian director Guy Maddin is known for his out-there films, and his black-and-white, Depression-era, 2003 offering is no exception. Rossellini stars as Helen Port-Huntley, who is trying to promote her company, Muskeg Beer, as Prohibition is about to be repealed in the US. She’ll do this by holding a contest to determine the saddest music in the world, which will come with a cash prize. Her backstory is a curious one: once caught in a love triangle between Broadway producer Chester and his father Fyodor, Helen’s legs had to be amputated when a car accident coincided with a sex act.

Chester later rekindles the relationship with Helen, while Fyodor can only hope to win her back by crafting glass prosthetic legs that she can fill with beer. While Helen loves the legs, she still doesn’t love Fyodor. Helen is a tragic figure with bleach blond hair, wrapped in fur and melancholy, and if there was ever an actress who could pull this off with beer-filled legs and come out empathetic, it’s Rossellini.

5

Marcel the Shell with Shoes on (2022)

It hardly seems possible that Rossellini could be any more charming than in Green Porno, but as Nana Connie, Marcel the Shell’s grandmother, she steals the show. Nana Connie tends her garden, looks after Marcel, and loves Lesley Stahl. She’s a bit forgetful, but after a fall she starts to deteriorate. There’s just something about someone of Rossellini’s pedigree turning in a beautiful, warm voice performance as a kind and tender shell trying to reunite with her family. Rossellini’s lovely, distinctive voice will make you wish that you too had a shell for a grandmother.

4

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 black comedy Death Becomes Her is largely famous for the roles played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as Madeleine and Helen, former friends who fall out when glamorous actress Madeleine steals Helen’s fiancé Ernest, Bruce Willis. Helen falls apart, but when they meet again seven years later, the roles have been reversed, as Madeleine’s career is drying up, but Helen is now a famous writer, as well as looking fantastic. The reason? A potion, courtesy of one Lisle Von Rhuman (Rossellini), a beautiful, elegant woman who claims to be 71, yet thanks to the potion, appears to be in her 30s.

Up until this point, Rossellini had largely played roles that traded on her untouchable, mysterious beauty, like in Blue Velvet. That also happens here, but in the part of Lisle, she gets to embrace a sillier side, and she wasn’t afraid to beg Zemeckis for the role as a woman obsessed with youth, telling him, “But I work for Lancôme! I sell anti-aging cream! I’m the perfect one!”

3

Green Porno (2015)

Green Porno

Isabella Rossellini

Various

Green Porno is a series of short films made for The Sundance Channel, all starring and written by Rossellini, with a first series about animal mating, a second about marine life, and a third examining the depletion of ocean life. It’s impossible to describe how charming Rossellini is, narrating as well as dressing up as various animals in low-budget foam and cardboard costumes. It sort of has the feeling of an elementary school science project, but it’s highly enjoyable, and you’ll find yourself learning a few facts about animals along the way, whether she’s miming the death throes of a bee who just had sex, or a hamster in jail for murdering her children.

2

Conclave (2024)

Conclave

4
/5

Release Date

October 25, 2024

Runtime

120 Minutes

Director

Edward Berger

Edward Berger’s 2024 film Conclave is a masterclass in acting courtesy of a phenomenal ensemble. Ralph Fiennes is incredible as a Cardinal navigating the election of the next Pope, and is supported by excellent performances from Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, Lucian Msamati, and, of course, Isabella Rossellini. Portraying Sister Agnes, Rossellini is perfectly subtle as a nun who is largely invisible from the big power players at the Vatican, making it all the more powerful when she does share her thoughts and heart.

1

Blue Velvet (1986)

Blue Velvet

5
/5

Release Date

January 1, 1986

Runtime

120 minutes

The 1986 David Lynch film Blue Velvet was a turning point in Rossellini’s career. It’s a notoriously dark and violent neo-noir, and she was actually dropped by her agency after the film’s release. Rossellini plays Dorothy, a lounge singer being used as a sex slave by terrifying gangster Frank Booth (an all-in Dennis Hopper).

It’s an unrelentingly brutal film, and Dorothy suffers repeated, humiliating physical and sexual abuse at Frank’s hands, and is kept a virtual prisoner by virtue of Frank having kidnapped her husband and son. Rosselini’s performance was universally praised by critics, with Janet Maslin commenting that “Mr. Hopper and Miss Rossellini are so far outside the bounds of ordinary acting here that their performances are best understood in terms of sheer lack of inhibition.”

You can view the original article HERE.