Isabella Rossellini is 71 years young. She is the epidome of aging gracefully, or aging naturally and on her own terms. The actress-turned-sheep-farmer recently opened up about aging to The New York Times in an article titled, “How to Grow Old Like Isabella Rossellini.” It could have been called, “Aging gracefully, wrinkles and all.” In short, we want what she’s having, which is a life of freedom and passion, living healthy and being productive, on her own terms, free of expectations and requirements to be someone or somewhere not of her choosing.
The far-reaching interview about the arc of her life after 45, her current passions (farming and animals) and she made it clear that there are choices when it comes to aging. One is to allow yourself to do whatever it is that brings you pleasure, reward, and meaning. The other is that she bridled at the questions that revolved around who she was or wasn’t dating. Specifically, Rossellini made it clear that she didn’t want the interviewer to focus on the men in her life and that for her aging is a creative endeavor, and not one focused on looks, romance, or pleasing others.
Aging gracefully used to mean anti-aging. That was certainly one thing the beauty industry got everyone hooked on with creams and serums designed to reduce fine lines and smooth out skin. Lancôme, which worked with Rossellini for decades, then dropped her, then picked her up again, has come around to the idea that aging gracefully can mean healthily but not necessarily trying to deny one’s age.
Now aging gracefully means living on your own terms, being productive and following your passions, including helping raise grandchildren and being a matriarchal figure in the family. The film star, director, writer and Hollywood scion, twin daughter of the famous Italian Director Roberto Rossellini and beautiful and talented Swedish screen star Ingrid Bergman, explains that she learned from studying the animal kingdom, and specifically whales, that there is a reason humans live an estimated half of their life span as post-reproductive, yet vital members of their family.
What Whales Can Teach us About Our Role and Aging
Whales with grandmothers as escorts (along with their mothers) thrive and live longer than whales only accompanied by one adult female. This is known as the Grandmother Effect. Studies of the killer whales off the Pactific Northwest show that these female orcas, like humans, live beyond their reproductive years. The Darwinian qustion was always, why do females live half their lives after their ability to have children of their own? To what purpose? Well a 2020 study of killer whales found that not only do orca grandmothers live long past their reproduvtive years, but they are crucial to their grandbabies’ survival!
Few species go through menopause, and most can reproduce their entire lives, but for humans and whales, it means that older females are able to work in cooperation with their offspring to ensure the safety and security of their grandchildren, and not create more offsprring of their own to compete for resources and attention. This means that orca grandchildren have a better chance of surviving if their grandmothers are closeby.
So the role of the wise woman in your life (aunt, Godmother or grandmother, or close family friend or mentor) may be there to guide, offer protection and help nurture the younger generations in her pervue. From the perspective of the older woman, it is also clear that aging, especially after about 45, affords you the freedom to reinvent yourself and decide how to spend your time.
By your late 40s, if you had kids in your mid 20s or early 30s, they are nearly grown, or at least becoming more independent, and in Isabella’s case, she was looking around at 45 and wondering what next. (She explains that at her therapist’s suggestion, she took a six-month break from dating and that break stretched for several years.) Around the same time her beauty contract with Lancôlm ended and she was set loose from modeling for a stretch. She went back to school, studied ethology, or animal behavior, and bought a farm.
“You know, they all talk about wrinkles, but talk about the freedom that comes with old age. When you’re young, there is a lot of expectation … there are so many things to prove. But as you become older, you just are lucky to be alive and healthy. And then you start saying, Well, what do I want? Let me do what I want.”
– Isabella Rossellini
In this free state, post kids and other immediate obligations to conform and be someone else’s idea of feminine role model, Rossellini explains, you can follow your heart. In her case, it meant going back to school to study animals, or ethology, buying a farm, and through a mix of optimism and ignorance becoming an organic farmer, raising chickens, sheep, and goats, and producing a humane type of wool for fashion designers.
Rossellini is a Local Benevolent Figure in Bellport, Long Island
I see Isabella around the community of Bellport Long Island, where it’s casual and cozy and everyone waves and goes to each other’s houses for summer parties. She is always on her bike, smiling, wearing a floppy hat and overalls, and doesn’t appear to care about makeup or trying to put on an image for anyone else.
Her life is full, her days are packed, and between acting, farming, spending time with her grandchildren, and being an environmental advocate (next to the farm is an environmental education foundation that brings in kids for programming), Isabella never seems to age or lose any ounce of energy. She is in constant motion.
This is the type of grandmother I hope to be one day: Cheerful, engaged, busy, and loving. And not overly concerned with trying to look young for someone else’s view of what “anti-aging” should look like. Lancôme brought her back after cutting her from the roster when they finally realized that aging is beautiful and can be elegant, aspirational, and something women strive for if done authentically and with a healthy outlook.
We all age, but we get to choose what that looks like for each of us. I look up to Isabella not only for her energy and authenticity but her outspokenness. She tells off the interviewer a few times, adjusting the direction of questioning and taking issue with the fact that as an actress, all her life, interviewers have asked her about her love life, who is is dating, and trying to define her as someone’s girlfriend.
Here is one particularly poignant quote. Read the whole story for Isabella’s full perspective on life after kids, after 45, and after a time when who you’re dating (or sleeping with) is the number one topic of interest or concern.
Asking about legacy, the interviewer requested Isabella reflect on hers: “What does legacy actually mean, like what does that word mean to you”
Isabella would not be hemmed in. “It really means nothing. It means I’m going to die. Imean, if you intend by “legacy” a reputation of a person that lives and wants to be rememvr, I never had that. … When you’re dead, you’re dead. If you’re lucky, your children rememver you.” She adds that she thought her parents would be remembered, but instead found “there is a slow forgetting.”
On the topic of aging she wants to shift the focus from wrinkles to freedom.
“You know, they all talk about wrinkles, but talk about the freedom that comes with old age. When you’re young, there is a lot of expectation…. there are so many things that you have to prove. But then as you become older, you just are lucky to be alive and healthy. And then you start saying, Well, what do I want? Let me do what I want. …
“I buy chickens. I play with wool. I play with the heritage breed of sheep.I go back to university and take a course on ornithology. There is serenity…. “
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