Isabella Rossellini

26th April 2024

Isabella Rossellini is probably best known as an actor, having acclaimed parts in movies like Blue Velvet, Death Becomes Her, and Big Night. She’s also a model, a performance artist, an accomplished singer and even an academic. When Isabella Rossellini joined Bullseye in 2022, she’d just starred alongside Jenny Slate in the animated film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. She spoke with guest host Louis Virtel about her role in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and why she is attracted to working in experimental film.

Episode notes

(Photo by Chris Delmas via Getty Images)

Isabella Rossellini was born into European film royalty–the daughter of director Roberto Rossellini and actor Ingrid Bergman. She’s probably best known as an actor, having acclaimed parts in movies like Blue Velvet, Death Becomes Her, and Big Night. 

She’s undeniably a multi-hyphenated icon. She’s also a model, a performance artist, an accomplished singer, and even an academic, earning a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior from Hunter College in New York City. 

More recently, Rossellini stars in the brand new Italian thriller La Chimera–it’s out now. It centers on a young British archaeologist who gets involved in an international network of stolen artifacts in the 80s. 

When Isabella Rossellini last joined Bullseye, she’d just starred alongside Jenny Slate in the animated film Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Slate plays the film’s title character: a tiny, talking seashell with red shoes and a single googly eye. Rossellini plays Marcel’s forgetful nana, Connie. 

She spoke with guest host Louis Virtel about her role in Marcel the Shell with Shoes, some of her past roles, and why she is attracted to working in experimental films.

This interview originally aired in July 2022.

In this episode...

Senior Producer
Producer
Maximum Fun Producer
Maximum Fun Production Fellow
Video Editor

Guests

  • Isabella Rossellini

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Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

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Senior Producer

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Maximum Fun Production Fellow

Video Editor

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