I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.

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.

I would like to be forgotten. What's so good about being remembered?

I seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.

I would love to be a field biologist. I would love to do what Jane Goodall did, just totally immerse myself in the life of one specific species for years and study every aspect of its behavior until little by little, all of these patterns become clear. That would be great, but I don't know if I have it left in me.

I have the most fun writing and directing. And I always choose myself as the lead actor.

You don't do an experimental film to become rich, so the people who are involved are involved because they enjoy the creative aspect of it.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have always loved animals and been fascinated with them.

It always amazed me that people believed I was this beautiful object.

I'm always a little worried when people have met me in person because I'm worried they'll be disappointed.

I don't wear much makeup, except during work. I felt lucky to be chosen to be a model. I used to joke, 'The next best thing to winning the lottery is having a beauty contract.'

I live my everyday life as a person, and I react to my photos from a certain distance. When I look at a photo, I detach myself and look at it as a product - not as me, Isabella.

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.

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.

The red carpet has become like a parallel business. The next day, there are TV programmes, and magazines, and it's all, 'Do you like the dress or not like the dress?' and 'Did she look fat?' To keep borrowing dresses and jewellery is like a full-time job. And you have to be a fantasy, which you can never be, so you always feel depressed.

When David left me I became totally brokenhearted.

But my mother loved The Elephant Man, and my father gave David Lynch a scholarship to study in Rome.

There is this idea that you have to play heroines or women who succeed.

I like to extend myself as an actress and David really helped me.

A lot of the advertisement is done by saying: first of all, have a complex about who you are.

I am much more radical in my beliefs than my products represent me to be.

But I don't really see myself as a role model. I'm not a dictator, or someone who wants to be adored!

I didn't want to become an actress because the competition with my mother would have been to much to live up to.

I am now at an age when they wanted me to play her mother.