In 1982, Isabella Rossellini signed an exclusive deal with Lancôme that made her the world’s highest-paid model. For over a decade, she promoted the brand’s fragrances, lipsticks and skincare in ads seen around the world.
Then, shortly before her 43rd birthday in 1995, she was fired.
“They explained to me that advertisement addresses the dream — and women dream to be young, not to grow old,” Rossellini, now 70, tells Page Six Style.
“Which might be a dream for some women, but I think the biggest dream for women is to grow old with beauty and dignity and elegance.”
She’s not alone in that stance; after her contract was ended, she says, fans and customers complained to the cosmetics company. But it wasn’t until 2016 that Lancôme came calling again — this time with a new female CEO, Francoise Lehmann, at the helm.
“They said, ‘We should have never let you go,” Rossellini recalls. “I certainly didn’t expect it 20 years later!”
She’s been working with the brand ever since, most recently starring in the new campaign for its La Vie Est Belle fragrance. That particular French expression — which translates to “life is beautiful” — might as well be a personal mantra for Rossellini, who’d rather embrace her many lived years with “sophistication,” as she puts it, than try to appear younger.
“We all age. It’s part of nature,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’ve never done any plastic surgery. If you do it, you might win a battle, but you lose the war.”
How about injectables?
“Philosophically, I could never reconcile having an organic farm, eating organic … and then injecting myself with Botox,” says Rossellini, whose 28-acre Long Island farm is home to chickens, dogs, bees and sheep.
“I don’t know how the two things could coexist. I mean, I do know they coexist because I have friends that do it, but it’s a contradiction!”
That’s not to say she’s never been tempted to go under the knife.
“I have to confess, my neck is the thing that makes me sometimes think I should have plastic surgery,” she says. “The neck is always a little bit upsetting, but I live with it. I prefer a little scarf to an operation!”
Rossellini does believe the beauty industry’s ageism issue has gotten “much better” in recent years, thanks in large part to the uptick in women leaders at cosmetics companies.
“Maybe men only understand our using perfume or makeup to seduce them,” she muses. “But of course, we do it not only to seduce men — we do it because it’s fun.”
Case in point? In addition to “religiously” applying Rossellini wears her signature red lipstick (“my uniform,” she calls it) even when tending to her animals on the farm.
After decades spent following in the footsteps of her famous parents, Swedish screen icon Ingrid Bergman and Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, and starring in beloved films like “Blue Velvet” and “Death Becomes Her,” she now spends more time tending to her barnyard companions than rubbing elbows with fellow Hollywood royalty on red carpets.
And her love of animals has inspired many of her recent projects — like “Green Porno,” her quirky series about the sexual behavior of various insects, and her new one-woman show “Darwin’s Smile,” which explores how animals express emotion. In 2019, Rossellini even earned her master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation at Hunter College in New York City.
“When you’re old, you can do everything you’ve always wanted to do. That’s the great fun about being old,” Rossellini tells us.
“I think you acquire a lot of freedom. When you’re young, you have many obligations … you have children to raise, you have to make it at your career. When you’re older, all these things have been answered. So now, I just do what I like.”