HOW TO SAIL THROUGH THE MENOPAUSE
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI on how her Lancome career proves attitudes to older women ARE changing
When Isabella Rossellini was 43, she was fired for being too old.
The renowned beauty and daughter of Ingrid Bergman had been an actress and the face of Lancome’s skincare and cosmetics for 14 years.
She was beautiful, yes, but age was against her. ‘I was told that advertisements represent women’s dreams, not reality, and that women dream of looking young. So I had to go. It felt very unjust,’ she says.
The enforced retirement devastated her career. When the Lancome contract came to an end, all her other modelling and film work dried up, too. ‘I can’t say I wasn’t sad,’ she says. ‘I know how to pose. I know how to give expression, and I had all this wonderful experience, but I couldn’t exercise it or offer it to anyone. Yes, it was painful.’ So, when she got a call from Lancome’s new general manager, Francoise Lehmann, two years ago, inviting her back, you would have thought she’d have told her where to stick her offer.
Besides, 20 years on, Rossellini had a new life. In the interim, she had bought and moved to an organic farm on Long Island, a couple of hours’ drive east of new York, gained a Master’s degree in animal behaviour and ‘started to make funny films, just for fun’, about such
things as the sex lives of insects, for Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel. She walked guide-dog puppies, kept bees and tended to her chickens. yet the Lancome offer was intriguing. ‘i was just so surprised! i said: “you let me go at 43 and now i’m 63. i haven’t got any younger!” But i agreed to meet, because i was very curious.’
Arriving early at the meeting, she saw a motorcycle draw up. ‘ A fantastic-looking woman got off, took off her casque [helmet] and this blonde hair fell out.
‘Then she walked up to me, shook my hand and said: “Hi, i’m francoise,” and, just with that, i knew things had changed. Before, i used to deal with 60-year-old men who were paternalistic and condescending.
‘i thought: “My God, this is a revolution!” i asked her: “why me? you are digging up an old story.” But she said: “we made a mistake. i want that story to be rewritten.” Her courage in saying that touched me so much, i wanted to work with them again.’
Now, two years on, her career is back on track with a vengeance. Alongside the worldwide Lancome campaign, she is in two forthcoming Hollywood movies — Vita And Virginia (about the love affair between Vita Sackville-west and Virginia woolf) and incredibles 2 — has a book coming out about chickens and is about to start a theatre tour across europe.
That Lancome is banking on a 65-year-old to front its multi-million-pound campaign marks a radical and welcome shift in the beauty industry’s attitudes to women and ageing.
yes, we have seen ads featuring 72-year-old Helen Mirren and 80-year-old Jane fonda, but Mirren prides herself on looking years younger than she is, while fonda has admitted she’s had work done.
To celebrate natural beauty such as Rossellini’s — well, that feels genuinely ground-breaking for older women, as is the fact that the first product she is promoting, a radiance-boosting cream called Renergie, is aimed squarely at the 60-plus market.
ONTHe day i meet Rossellini, in a flower-filled suite at the Savoy Hotel, i find myself trying not to stare too intently at a face that is beautiful, yes, but which also looks very definitely 65.
The bright, merciless London daylight pours in through the huge windows as i scan her face for telltale signs of anti-ageing help.
As a beauty journalist who has tested pretty much everything going for the past 20 years, i pride myself on my ability to spot even the subtlest of work.
Rossellini’s default expression is a polite, animated smile that lifts up the contours of her face, bunches her still-full cheeks and starts up the crinkles in what can only be described as crow’s feet.
Her famously strong eyebrows, while neatly shaped, sit a fraction lower than they used to on her eyelids. Her lips have lost their youthful volume, but are still a beautiful shape, picked out in a deep-pink, matte lipstick (How can she get away with matte over 60? On anyone else, a shine-free finish would render the lips a pair of desiccated earthworms).
Her jawline has softened and the skin on her neck is thickened and creased — but her face has a glow to it, rather than that dull, papery finish age tends to confer.
Has she felt a need to preserve the face that has been her fortune?
‘i didn’t feel this urge to preserve,’ she says, thoughtfully. ‘i do not define elegance as being 60, but looking 58. what i have looked for in cosmetics is something to express elegance and sophistication. it’s the same with my clothes, or the way i decorate my house.’
Today, her clothes — long, loose, colourful layers — drape across a surprisingly normal, generous figure.
i don’t think i’ve ever met anyone in the beauty world who has such a clear lack of interest in looking younger, or whose face moves exactly as nature intended. when she tells me that she would never countenance cosmetic surgery, i don’t doubt her.
‘i didn’t do it because, frankly, i’m afraid of it,’ she says. ‘i was born with a spinal deformity called scoliosis and i’ve had two major back operations, one aged 13 and one five years ago. i couldn’t walk for six months.
‘i had to have a nurse. even if plastic surgery isn’t this bad, just the word “operation” fills me with fear.’
i can see she is telling the truth. But i ask her, just for good measure, hasn’t she even