By Kiša Lala
Isabella Rossellini as Mary and William Hurt as Adam (Photos by Olive Films)
Isabella Rossellini as Mary and Joanna Lumley as Charlotte (Photos by Olive Films)
“There is a not a real place for people between 60 and 80,” remarked Isabella Rossellini just shy of her 60th birthday, as we discussed her role in the film Late Bloomers, directed by Julie Gavras.
Speaking to me from her home in Bellport, New York, Rossellini said that she’d been intrigued to discover, director Julie Gavras was the daughter of another famous film director, Greek-born Costas Gavras, much lauded for his 1969 political thriller, Z. Witnessing her now-octogenarian father receive honors for the 40th anniversary of Z, the younger Gavras realized how society had a way of marginalizing one after a certain age, summing up one’s creative life and deciding it was over, and this inspired her to make her film.
In Late Bloomers, the husband an architect, played by William Hurt, receives a lifetime achievement award, and the wife, Mary, played by Rossellini, has a sudden crisis, realizing that the award signaled the beginning of the end. The architect, who is more in denial, subsequently gets an assignment to design a retirement home, but decides it’s not a ‘cool’ enough project.
“I’m 30 years older than Julie, a completely different generation,” said Rossellini of the director, “but her parents are even older, obviously. Costas is very active and healthy, and would like to direct more films than he is allowed at 80.”
Speaking at the Wolfsonian Museum in December 2010, Isabella Rossellini recalls the first time she modeled - with Bruce Weber © Kisa Lala
Read more of the chat with Isabella Rossellini
