Isabella I’m more than just a beauty
Italian actress Isabella Rossellini has said she finds it condescending when people tell her she is beautiful.
The 64-year- old star of films such as Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her is back as the face of French cosmetics firm Lancome – 20 years after being dropped from their campaigns.
She said: “When people tell me, ‘You look glamorous, you look sophisticated or elegant,’ it’s wonderful.
“But when people say, ‘ You’re beautiful,’ I find it a little condescending. Worse now, because they say, ‘ You’re still beautiful.’
“In Italian, we say it’s a kni fe with both edges, because I know they mean it to please me. I am old – this is what 65 looks like.”
The daughter of Swedish screen siren Ingrid Bergman says her mother cautioned her that work dries up for middle-aged actresses.
She said: “My mum told me that there is no job for women between 45 and 60, because you are in-between.
“You are not young enough to play the young girl but you are also not old enough to play the matriarch, the witch or grandmother.
“So there is a period of 15 years where you’re in limbo, then after 60, a lot of work comes back. That was true for my mum.
“And you see, Maggie Smith is the hottest thing on Earth. Helen Mirren is the hottest thing on Earth.”
She joins fellow actresses Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Julia Roberts and Kate Winslet in fronting Lancome campaigns.