Once I realised that my job as a model was to emote in front of the camera, I thought, 'Well now, I just have to add words, and I can do films.' But also, my success as a model made me more confident about becoming an actress because, just in case I failed, I thought, 'Well, you know, if I failed as an actress, I can do another job.'
If you see a person who's insecure and covers it up, it can be quite a problem. But the person who is insecure and shows you is quite appealing. They give you just the courage to drop your defenses.
By the time I was successful with covers of 'Vogue' and 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'Vanity Fair' and the Lancome contract, someone asked how old I was. They almost fainted when I said 33.
True elegance for me is the manifestation of an independent mind.
Animation translates well to a small screen. When you look at Walt Disney or Chuck Jones - you know, Bugs Bunny - there really isn't any difference if you watch on a very big screen or a computer screen.
I seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.
There are so many spiders, and their rituals, their mating rituals, their courtship ritual, can be very, very different.
As I grew older, I worked less as an actor and as a model, and I went back to what I had tried to do when I was young but wasn't really available. I'm so glad now to be in my sixties and to be able to go back to school.
I started modeling at 28. I'm 5-feet-7 1/2, and I never went on a diet. I followed what my doctor told me: 'It's good to have a little bit of fat. Your weight is fine. Don't go any lighter.'
I graduated from Academy of Fashion and Costume Design in Rome. At first, I thought I was going to be a costume designer for films, and then I ended up working in fashion - not as a designer, but mostly as a model.
I think I was always interested in animals. If a man likes a woman, you know, he might discuss business, but there's a part of his brain that is looking at the girl coming in and checking the girls. I do the same with animals.
These same people seem to forget that mother also took a lot of chances with the type of roles she played.
There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.
I live in New York, but I am always delighted to come to Europe because I am European and grew up here until I was 20. I am not only Italian, I am partly Swedish. When my parents divorced, I was three years old and went to live in Paris... when I am offered a film in Europe, I come with great enthusiasm!
It's a new business for me to be a filmmaker.
I wanted to make a film about my dad, a sort of love letter, and explain what I understood of his cinema, which was so utopian. I also wanted to give the sense of his cinema, because they have never been very big box-office, but they were very influential.
Every time you work, it's a new film, and generally when you work with auteurs, people that write and direct their films, there's always an originality.
It took me a long time to be accepted as an actress, I think, because of the modeling and because of my mother.
My films are comical films. They are made to laugh at. They are comical - and scientifically correct.
I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.
I loved my career as a model, and that evolved into being an actress.
I live in New York, and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage, I feel relief; in our urban environment, other animals are dying out.
When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model.
I am now at an age when they wanted me to play her mother.
Although Dorothy in Blue Velvet was humiliated and hurt by men, basically I could react to how she felt.
Many years in New York has made me urban, and I won't eat my chicken because I met him personally!
I don't look at 'Vogue' to ask what I'm going to wear. Because it's something on a body too young. I have to look at the social pages to see women my age. To see how Amanda Burden is dressed and say, 'Hmmm. Maybe I should try that.'
I always loved experimenting in film.
A lot of the advertisement is done by saying: first of all, have a complex about who you are.
Mammals are very close to us, but bugs are strange. They're more mysterious and exotic.
That is the great pleasure of working with great directors. You get to look at the world through many different prisms. I guess I love talent, whatever form it takes.
I am much more radical in my beliefs than my products represent me to be.
People use mobile phones in this very distracting environment where you probably don't have time to watch a 30-minute film, but you might have time to look at a film for a minute and learn something you didn't expect while you walk on the streets.
I like to extend myself as an actress and David really helped me.
It's nice to go and be a guest on a television sitcom. It pays well; it's easy because generally it's a supporting role, so you go, you do two or three things, you're in touch with people there. They're widely popular, so they're seen by many people.
I always dreamed when I was a little girl interested in animals that I would go live in Africa. Then I found out that you can look in your backyard, and you can do your own safari.
If a hamster has too many babies she knows she cannot carry, she not only abandons them, but she eats them. That means she doesn't have to go out and hunt for food for herself.
I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?
I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Everybody in my family was in films, and they succeeded so much, I thought, 'It's better for me to do something else,' and they agreed.
Market research shows that older women like seeing older women in ads, and that younger women do, too - because they see them and are not frightened of growing older.
My father's films are often very slow for the modern audiences, which are used to a lot of editing. It's the audience that watches the film instead of the director dictating the reaction he wants from you.
If you look at most beauty advertisements, you would think that makeup is only for beautiful women in their early twenties.
When I grew up in Italy in the 1950s, it was still very agricultural. Food was very important; produce was very important. Everyone made their own olive oil. It took me a long time after I moved here to understand that Americans are much further away from their food.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have always loved animals and been fascinated with them.
Most people divorce because one in the couple falls in love with someone else: it's a common cause of divorce. I still think that it's tinted - this is my opinion - with a veil of racism and American puritanism.
One of the great issues in biology is the origin of altruism - of why you would do something for someone else that could hurt you - and Darwin posited that it might be rooted in maternal instinct, in sacrificing yourself for your children.
I grew up in Italy, and our country is a country of great agriculture and food produce. It wasn't like I was urban and only knew about high-heeled shoes and purses and never knew where my eggs came from.
When David left me I became totally brokenhearted.
