June 18th, 2007 - Happy Birthday Isabella Rossellini!

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Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini (born June 18, 1952 in Rome, Italy) is an Italian actress, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and model.

She's 55!



Rossellini is the daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She has three siblings from her mother: her twin sister Isotta Ingrid Rossellini, who is an adjunct professor of Italian literature; a brother, Roberto Ingmar Rossellini, who works in finance; and a half-sister, Pia Lindström, who formerly worked on television and is from her mother's first marriage. She also has four other siblings from her father's two other marriages: Romano (died at age 9), Renzo, Gil, and Raffaella.

Rossellini was born and raised in Rome, Santa Marinella, and Paris. At the age of 13, she was diagnosed with scoliosis. In order to correct it, Isabella had to undergo an 18 month ordeal of painful stretching, body casts, surgery on her spine using pieces of one of her shin bones (used to add supports for the individual vertebrae without risking foreign body rejection issues), and a recovery from that surgery. Consequently, she has permanent incision scars on her back and shin. Incidentally, her daughter, Elettra, also developed scoliosis when she was a child.

At the age of 19, she came to New York, where she worked as a translator and a RAI television reporter. She also appeared intermittently on Roberto Benigni's Italian comedy show, "The Other Sunday." However, she did not decide to stay full time in New York until her marriage to Martin Scorsese (1979-1982). After her marriage to Scorsese, she married Jon Wiedemann (1983-1986), a German model (now a Microsoft executive), and gave birth to a daughter, Elettra. Later, she dated David Lynch, Gary Oldman, and Gregory Mosher.

At the age of 28, her modeling career began, when she was photographed by Bruce Weber for British Vogue and by Bill King for American Vogue. During her career, she has also worked with many other renowned photographers, including Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Peter Lindbergh, Norman Parkinson, Eve Arnold, Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, and Robert Mapplethorpe. Her image has appeared on such magazines as Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and ELLE. Furthermore, in March 1988, an exhibition dedicated to photographs of her, called Portrait of a Woman, was held at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris.

Rossellini's modeling career led her into the world of cosmetics, when she became the exclusive spokesmodel for the international cosmetics brand Lancôme in 1982, replacing Nancy Duteil in the United States and Carol Alt in Europe. While there, in 1990, she was involved in product development for Lancôme's fragrance Trésor. Later, in 1995, she worked with the Coty Group and developed her own brand of cosmetics, Isabella Rossellini's Manifesto. However, in 1996, after 14 years with the company, she was infamously removed as the face of Lancôme for being "too old", since she was in her 40s at the time.

A Bit of Trivia:

• She closely resembles her mother and performed an eerily accurate parody of Bergman's character Ilsa Lund from Casablanca in a Robert Zemeckis-directed episode of Tales from the Crypt called "You, Murderer." In this episode, she plays the scheming wife of a Humphrey Bogart character. This episode is best known for the fact that Humphrey Bogart and Alfred Hitchcock were digitally inserted using old video clips and CGI.
• In 1997, Isabella provided voice acting for the video game Ceremony of Innocence, together with Paul McGann and Ben Kingsley. She also provided her voice for the 1996 video game Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland.
• She performed the live narration for Guy Maddin's silent film The Brand Upon the Brain at the New York Film Festival on October 15, 2006.
• She holds dual United States and Italian citizenship.

Other June 18th Birthdays:

Paul McCartney-Musician -65
Roger Ebert-Film Critic -65
Constance McCashin-Actress/Knots Landing -60
Carol Kane-Actress -55