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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 seldom look at myself to avoid any self-criticism.

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

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 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 graduated from Academy of Fashion and Costume Design in Rome. At first, I thought I was going to be a costume designer for films, and then I ended up working in fashion - not as a designer, but mostly as a model.

I've always been an entertainer all my life; I come from a family of entertainers. I always made, very pretentiously, a comparison with Agatha Christie. Her inspiration was crime, and I'm sure she must have taken courses or read about crime, because it was the basis of her stories. But ultimately, it was her own fantasy.

As I grew older, I worked less as an actor and as a model, and I went back to what I had tried to do when I was young but wasn't really available. I'm so glad now to be in my sixties and to be able to go back to school.

Every time you work, it's a new film, and generally when you work with auteurs, people that write and direct their films, there's always an originality.

It's nice to go and be a guest on a television sitcom. It pays well; it's easy because generally it's a supporting role, so you go, you do two or three things, you're in touch with people there. They're widely popular, so they're seen by many people.

I'd love to meet Darwin. He caused such controversy over whether God created the earth in six days or whether we evolved over time. I'd love to discuss that with him - what a fantastic conversation!

My perfume, Manifesto, was based on the scent of basil.

I always say that in my career as an actress, I've always worked with people like David Lynch or Guy Maddin or Peter Weir who are considered not mainstream directors and that could be because they are like my dad. They are pioneers, and pioneers, by definition, invent something new.

My films are comical films. They are made to laugh at. They are comical - and scientifically correct.

I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the ocean.

I've always been interested in animal behavior, and I keep reading about it because it's so surprising all the time - so many things are happening around us that we neglect to look at. Part of the passion I have for biology is based on this wonderment.

I live in New York, and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage, I feel relief; in our urban environment, other animals are dying out.

Once I realised that my job as a model was to emote in front of the camera, I thought, 'Well now, I just have to add words, and I can do films.' But also, my success as a model made me more confident about becoming an actress because, just in case I failed, I thought, 'Well, you know, if I failed as an actress, I can do another job.'

When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.

Most people divorce because one in the couple falls in love with someone else: it's a common cause of divorce. I still think that it's tinted - this is my opinion - with a veil of racism and American puritanism.

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.

I don't look at 'Vogue' to ask what I'm going to wear. Because it's something on a body too young. I have to look at the social pages to see women my age. To see how Amanda Burden is dressed and say, 'Hmmm. Maybe I should try that.'

I am the daughter of Mr. Neo-realism: I should gravitate towards narrative simply told, character, the truth. And I do love those movies.

That is the great pleasure of working with great directors. You get to look at the world through many different prisms. I guess I love talent, whatever form it takes.

I think I was always interested in animals. If a man likes a woman, you know, he might discuss business, but there's a part of his brain that is looking at the girl coming in and checking the girls. I do the same with animals.

The problem with middle age, at least when it comes to modeling, is you seldom see a model who is past 27, 28. If they use anyone older, then it becomes automatically a 'personality' story.

Maybe there's some kind of modeling that can be tedious, like catalogue modeling, but there's a kind of modeling, with runways or working with Richard Avedon, that's not very far from acting. Besides the fact that you don't have a partner to react to, the body language is the same.

The secret of using makeup for fashion is to have fun with it. When people see that you are playful, that's attractive. Sometimes people apply makeup because they have bags under their eyes or because they don't feel good, and that just reads 'insecure.'

If you see a person who's insecure and covers it up, it can be quite a problem. But the person who is insecure and shows you is quite appealing. They give you just the courage to drop your defenses.

I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Everybody in my family was in films, and they succeeded so much, I thought, 'It's better for me to do something else,' and they agreed.

It took me a long time to be accepted as an actress, I think, because of the modeling and because of my mother.

I live in the country. I'm a bird-watcher, an oyster-raiser. You know, I'll do anything that - raise dogs for the blind as a volunteer.

I always loved experimenting in film.

I loved my career as a model, and that evolved into being an actress.

Animals are everywhere. Some are more romantic, like tigers and elephants and chimpanzees, and some are less romantic, like earthworms, but they are just as interesting.

I never really think about what I have to do to stick to my image. I just follow what I like to do. Sometimes it's glamorous, sometimes it's not.

People use mobile phones in this very distracting environment where you probably don't have time to watch a 30-minute film, but you might have time to look at a film for a minute and learn something you didn't expect while you walk on the streets.

I'd like this to become my principal activity: to make films about animals. Of course it's always interesting to model, but it depends who you are working with. I will continue to make acting, too, but I'm old - I'm getting tired of it.

I grew up in Italy, and our country is a country of great agriculture and food produce. It wasn't like I was urban and only knew about high-heeled shoes and purses and never knew where my eggs came from.

When I grew up, we always had our chickens, and we ate our eggs, and we ate our chickens. The family always had a pig, and we would kill it at Christmas and eat it for three or four months afterwards.

Many years in New York has made me urban, and I won't eat my chicken because I met him personally!