, Isabella Rossellini is able to say a lot without hardly saying anything at all.
The film is a fictional drama that lifts the curtain on the Vatican's mysterious ceremony to elect a new pope. Rossellini plays the silent yet formidable Sister Agnes who's responsible for tending to the cardinals as they make their decision. With a single look or the clearing of her throat, the Italian actor is able to convey her character's grave disappointment, moral concern or quiet solidarity.
"I can maybe compare to Jewish people who may not go to the synagogue, but they are Jewish by culture," she says. "So Italians are glued together, even if they are not a believer, but they do have a kind of a Catholic glue."As the daughter of two very famous parents, Rossellini chose not to pursue acting right away. Instead, she made a name for herself in modelling, becoming the highest-paid model in the world after signing an exclusive deal with Lancôme in 1982.
"My father, Roberto Rossellini, and my mother, Ingrid Bergman, were so well-known and so talented, and I was intimidated," she says. "I thought that maybe I should do something on my own…. Modelling became very successful, and I was very happy to have a career that was separated from cinema, from my parents, that was my own."It wasn't until she received encouragement from the American fashion photographer Richard Avedon that she decided to make the switch to the screen.
" used to say, 'But Isabella, modeling is a little bit like acting,'" she recalls. "'You don't have lines, but I'm not photographing a beautiful nose or a beautiful mouth, I'm photographing emotion and you are emoting in front of my camera.' … Modelling, generally, is very brief. Two years, three years, and then that's it. So it was only in my 30s that I decided to become an actress, and then in my 50s to become a director.