Hollywood is ‘difficult’ for actresses with kids
Having children is holding women back in Hollywood, Isabella Rossellini says, as she claimed it was “unbelievably difficult” for actresses to work and have a family.
Rossellini, an actress and mother of two, said having children was still the “biggest problem” standing in the way of female stars achieving parity with men.
Speaking at the Women in Motion event at the Cannes Film Festival, she said she had found it too challenging to balance her career with picking her children up from school, claiming it was her “one complaint” about the film industry.
Rossellini, 62, the daughter of Ingrid Bergman, the actress, and Roberto Rossellini, the director, said: “I don’t have many complaints (about the film industry) but I do have one ... the hardest part for me was trying to integrate a career and a family.”
Rossellini, the star of films including Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her, and the former wife of director Martin Scorsese has a daughter, Elettra, whom she had with her second husband, Jon Wiedemann, a Microsoft executive, and a son, Roberto, adopted in 1992.
“I tried to have my children come with me on the set,” she said. “But as they got older they wanted to stay with their friends. Then there was school — school meetings are at three o’clock in the afternoon. Now, no working mothers can go to school meetings (at that time).
“In America, you can get a tax deduction for having lunch with a business partner, but not for a babysitter. These were the things that were the hardest for me, and for my mother as well.”