Isabella Rossellini is a very considerate interviewee. She provides me full names, accurate dates and historical context, as if fact-checking for me in real time. “You have to maybe explain to your readers that my mama was a big Hollywood star,” she tells me early on, in that unmistakable continental purr. “Her name was Ingrid Bergman.” As if Rossellini’s face – lifted more or less wholesale from the Casablanca star – wasn’t enough of a clue.
If I were speaking to Rossellini decades ago – say, 10 or so years before she traumatised audiences in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet – she may not have been as forthcoming. Back then she felt her lineage was more of a hindrance. There was Bergman, yes, but also her father, the Italian neorealist filmmaker Roberto Rossellini.
