Isabella Rossellini

An icon in film and fashion, actress Isabella Rossellini dedicated her recent years to the study of animal behavior and conservation, earning a Master’s degree from Hunter College in 2019. As she has explained in numerous interviews, this subject was a long-time passion, and became the premise of her one-woman shows Green Porno: Live on Stage (2008) and Link Link Circus (2019). Both performances explore the connection between humans and animals, inspired by her studies at Hunter College. Rossellini performed Link Link Circus as part of the Hunter Theater Project.

She entered the graduate program at Hunter in part because her modeling and acting work were becoming infrequent as she aged. At the 2019 commencement, Rosellini gave the following advice to the graduating class: “To all the students I share the classroom with: an enormous thank you for welcoming me, a woman who is their grandmothers’ age. I am here to tell you that if you ever encounter a dip in your life, pay no attention to the voice inside of you that judges you, that is negative, that fosters further anxiety. Just follow your curiosities.”