MY WEEKEND: Isabella Rossellini
Isabella Rossellini is Hollywood royalty, but the 65-year-old actress and daughter of Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini isn’t content to rest on her laurels. In addition to starring in the Hulu series “Shut Eye,” which just started its second season, she’s working on a master’s degree; preparing for the March 2018 debut of her latest one-woman show, “Link Link Circus”; and running her own organic farm in Bellport, LI. On Sunday, Rossellini will take the stage at t he 92nd Street Y to talk about her life and work. But first, she tells RAQUEL LANERI how she spends her weekends.
I wake up very early, around 5, and the first thing I do is study. I am finishing my master’s degree in animal behavior at Hunter College Midtown, so I study for my classes or I write and have a cappuccino and then two of my own eggs, which our chickens produce. We also have a few sheep, goats and pigs, but they’re just for fun. I moved to Long Island 10 years ago. At first I thought, “Well, I’ll live in the country and come to the city every weekend.” But the farm keeps me very busy! We run a vegetable stand in the village every Saturday. We just produced our own honey, too. Beekeeping is like raising Martians: They’re alive, they do things that you recognize — they eat, they raise babies — but they do it so differently from us. It’s fascinating. My daughter [the chef Elettra Wiedemann] is pregnant, and so I have been spending time with her in Fort Greene. There is a restaurant on DeKalb called Roman’s, and we often go there to eat — just because my farm sells some of its vegetables to the restaurant and I’m very proud to see them all dressed up and looking delicious! It’s a farm-to-table restaurant, so the menu changes every week. That is part of the excitement. My daughter and I adore BAM [the Brooklyn Academy of Music], and we go see a lot of shows there, like the new James Thierrée [“The Toad Knew,” featuring a singing amphibian and acrobats], and we saw the [late ballet choreographer] Pina Bausch[’s company], which was amazing, amazing. Mikhail Baryshnikov also has a wonderful theater called the Baryshnikov Arts Center. I did a workshop there for my new monologue recently, and they have a program that’s very similar to BAM’s. The biggest theater is 230 seats, so it’s smaller, but it is still quite amazing. I go to MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I go to shows. Though you always wonder if you made the right choice, because there is so much going on. Like, I bought these theater tickets but now Bruce Springsteen is playing a show and I should have gone to see that!