Isabella
Rating:
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Genre=Non-fiction;
Pages=1;
Characters=2,365;
The following is an excerpt from an interview I (Sammy) found w/ actress Isabella Rossellini. I thought this portion of the interview would be of interest to casters. Apparently she was confined in a body cast as a teenager in order to treat her severe scoliosis and took to wearing the cast and keeping it around even after it was no longer medically necessary. The article does not go into detail about the cast she wore, but I did see a mention of it in another interview with her in which she described it as covering both legs and her entire torso and neck. I was intrigued by this passage, as I'm guessing you will be. (sammy (gimpfan))
TITLE: Famous daughter Rossellini pushing acting career
BYLINE: Roxanne T. Mueller
CREDIT: Newhouse News Service
EST. PAGES: 2
DATE: 12/02/85
SOURCE: The San Diego Union-Tribune; SDU
EDITION: TRIBUNE; 1,2,3,4,5,6; SECTION: ENTERTAINMENT; PAGE: D-11
CATEGORY: INTERVIEW
ORIGIN: CLEVELAND
(Copyright 1985)
We started to talk about her (Rossellini's) childhood, and before long I discovered something fascinating about this woman who had been telling me about playing nude scenes in a movie. For a period of 18 months, she was held totally immobile inside a body cast. She had a delicate spinal operation that required the cast, and while her twin sister socialized outside, she waited, day after day, unmoving, in her bedroom.
"My aunt said, make something of it! Read, learn! But when you lie still, you grow lethargic. You fantasize a lot. The first month was very painful, but after that, the days began to lose their shape. I took little naps all day and had insomnia all night. At the end, the lack of stimulus began to get to me. I was frightened to go back to normality. I had to re-educate my legs to walk. My neck muscles were weak, and driving in a car, when the car bounced, my head bounced around. Everything was too fast. Even water ran too fast.
"I kept my cast for years. I will tell you a secret. For months after they cut me out of my cast, I got back into it every night, like a turtle, to sleep. It was security. Later on, I kept it in my room. I used it as a desk. I stuck flowers and photographs to it. Finally, we moved, and it was lost. So they said. I think the housekeeper was tired of cleaning up all that white dust, and seeing that ugly thing in my room."