Italian actress will receive the European Achievement in World Cinema award, a lifetime achievement honor, at this year’s . The Italian-American star, daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, was a successful fashion model — famously for French cosmetics brand Lancôme — before shifting into acting. Her first leading role came in the Taviani brothers’ drama (1979), but her breakout was David Lynch’s (1986) in which she played the mysterious and tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens.
The performance, in which Rossellini also sang the film’s titular tune, won her the Independent Spirit Award for best female lead. Over the next 4 decades, Rossellini carved out a unique career in cinema, moving between big-budget features — Robert Zemeckis’s (1992), Peter Weir’s (1993) — and independent auteur films, working with Peter Greenaway ( (2003)), Guy Maddin (2006’s ), Marjane Satrapi ( (2011)), and Alice Rohrwacher (2023’s ). She was Emmy-nominated for a recurring role on and appeared in episodes of , , and as herself in an episode of ( ).
Most recently, Rossellini appears as a nosy nun in Edward Berger’s . Rossellini stepped behind the camera herself for , a series of comical shorts exploring the sex lives of animals, in which she played everything from a horny firefly to a motherly worm. Announcing the lifetime achievement award, the European Film Academy said the honor ” serves as a reminder of the depth.
