A force in the movie industry since her bravura leading performance in David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” in 1986, Isabella Rossellini scored her first Oscar nomination on Thursday for her supporting role as a Vatican nun in “Conclave.”
Shortly after the nomination announcement, Rossellini released a video in which she paid tribute to her parents, Ingrid Bergman and Robert Rossellini, as well as her former creative and romantic partner, Lynch, who died one week ago.
“I’m purposely sitting next to this poster,” Rossellini says in the video. “My father’s film ‘Europe ’51’ with my mom, Ingrid Bergman. I think of them so much, especially today, having become an Oscar nominee for the film ‘Conclave.’ I wish they were here to know this news, but maybe they know, because they might be up there knowing.”
She added, “And up there, I’m sure, is also David Lynch. My collaboration with him was so pivotal to my understanding of the art of acting.”
The nomination places Rossellini in the Academy history books. She is the daughter of three-time Oscar-winning actress Ingrid Bergman. Her father, the Italian neorealist filmmaking legend Roberto Rossellini (“Rome, Open City,” “Journey to Italy”) was also nominated once, in 1950 for his screenplay for “Paisan.”
Swedish acting legend Bergman is often cited as one of the greatest screen icons of all time, famed for her roles in “Casablanca,” “The Bells of St. Marys” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious.” She was a seven-time nominee who won three Oscars: two for Best Actress (“Gaslight” and “Anastasia”) and one for Best Supporting Actress (“Murder on the Orient Express”).
Rossellini’s nomination this year, in fact, comes on the 50th anniversary of her mother’s win for “Orient Express,” an all-star mystery film in which Bergman played a timid missionary suspected of murder.
The romance of Bergman and Roberto Rossellini was an international scandal when the couple married in 1950 because Bergman had just divorced her first husband Petter Aron Lindström. She was denounced for adultery, including on the floor of the United States Senate. Isabella and her twin sister Ingrid were born in Rome in 1952. Bergman and Rossellini divorced five years later.
Now 72, Rossellini has lived longer than both her father, who died at 71 in 1977, and her mother, who died on her 67th birthday in 1982.
Other mother-daughter Oscar nominees for acting include Liza Minnelli and her mother Judy Garland; Laura Dern and her mother Diane Ladd; Kate Hudson and her mother Goldie Hawn; and Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh.
A former model who moved into acting in the 1980s, Rossellini has mostly concentrated on work in the independent film realm (including seven films with avant-garde Canadian director Guy Maddin), with occasional big studio fare such as “Death Becomes Her.”
Her other credits include “Fearless” (as Jeff Bridges’ wife), “Two Lovers” (as Joaquin Phoenix’s mother), “Wild at Heart,” “Immortal Beloved” and “Big Night.” On TV, she appeared in “Julia,” “30 Rock” (as Alec Baldwin’s ex-wife) and “Green Porno,” a series of short films she directed about the mating habits of animals and insects. In 1997, she received an Emmy nomination for guest actress in a drama series for “Chicago Hope.”
As it turns out, Rossellini isn’t alone this year in the mother-daughter history-making. Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”) was nominated 26 years after her mother, Fernanda Montenegro (1998’s “Central Station”). Montengero even has a small role in “I’m Still Here” as the elderly version of Torres’ character in a late scene.
