Isabella Rossellini

Maybe there's some kind of modeling that can be tedious, like catalogue modeling, but there's a kind of modeling, with runways or working with Richard Avedon, that's not very far from acting. Besides the fact that you don't have a partner to react to, the body language is the same.

When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.

I became an actress way into my 30s because I thought that I had to find my own way, and that's why I worked so much in modelling, until I realised that the differences between acting and modelling weren't that great. I always say that modelling is a little bit like being a silent actress.

I graduated from Academy of Fashion and Costume Design in Rome. At first, I thought I was going to be a costume designer for films, and then I ended up working in fashion - not as a designer, but mostly as a model.

I always dreamed when I was a little girl interested in animals that I would go live in Africa. Then I found out that you can look in your backyard, and you can do your own safari.

I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?

It always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object.

I'm always a little worried when people have met me in person because I'm worried they'll be disappointed.

I like to extend myself as an actress and David really helped me.

There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I've loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn't really any job for me. It's being marginalized - that's the sad part.

I would love to be a field biologist. I would love to do what Jane Goodall did, just totally immerse myself in the life of one specific species for years and study every aspect of its behavior until little by little, all of these patterns become clear. That would be great, but I don't know if I have it left in me.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.