Isabella Rossellini Quotes

I mention my age because I find people in this country - women, not men, of course - women are so troubled by their age. There's a culture of youth, and it's a phony culture.

When I went back to modeling, nobody knew how to deal with a 46-year-old model!

I don't want to see a 70-year-old on television.

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

Age is just a number. Unless, that is, you live in Hollywood, where there's this notion that if you haven't hit it big by your 20s, you may as well hit the road.

There is this thing in America where actresses reach 40 and go mad. The film industry wants all these young people.

If you're good enough, you're old enough: that's what everyone says. When a talented young player emerges, his age doesn't matter; people want to see him in the team. So why, when you become older, is the assumption that you are no longer good enough?

I think this country is terribly, horribly obsessed with age, and it really is just this country. If you're still living and breathing at 50, then count your blessings!

My age is very insignificant to me. I don't think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

I'm not downplaying my age - because humankind is such that people run away from their age. Especially women. Guys pretend not to care, but they do. Age is not a good thing to most human beings. But, being an alien, I embrace it.

Hollywood is not good when it comes to age.

You can't be a model at age 60, but you certainly can be an actress.

I'm not one of those actors who lies about their age.

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.

When an actress is younger, she likes to lower her age, but when she is older, she likes to add to her years.

There's ageism in everything. I don't give a hoot. It isn't what other people think; it's what you think. But it's hard to come to terms with getting older. I admire people like Vivienne Westwood.

I don't want to be 45 competing with 20-year-olds, running to go get Botox. I want to be an expressive actor hired for the age that I am, portraying women who are my age: 40. I'm just hoping I can find some of those roles to play. Otherwise, I have to find something else.

A supermodel is kind of that first-name recognition, but I'm not quite ready for that super part yet, and I'm afraid that by the time I am, I'm going to be too old anyway.

There are consequences with age, so you have to evolve. I've loved becoming a filmmaker. But I would love to continue modeling, and there isn't really any job for me. It's being marginalized - that's the sad part.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

'Ageism,' or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. 'Oh, they're too old to make films or write books.'

Ageism is something that does exist.

I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it's not a personal illness.

I would model when they wanted me, and as I got older, they wanted an older model. I was quite willing to be mother of the bride at 28. I was quite happy to be on the cover of a grandparents' magazine at 42; I have no ego about that.

I've had statements made - 'Who in the heck wants to hear a 60-year-old singer?' That statement was made - it's disheartening, you know, because you say, 'Well, hey, why should a guy feel like that about it?'