Isabella Rossellini on Darwin, Dogs, Sheep, and Acting

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Isabella Rossellini, the actress recently nominated for an Oscar for her mostly silent role as a Vatican nun in Conclave, came to Barnard last month to discuss topics as dear to her as the stage: the nonvocal communication of animals, Charles Darwin, and the sheep on her Long Island farm. Alexandra Horowitz (above, right), professor of psychology and director of Barnard's Dog Cognition Lab, hosted the February 12 event, which coincidentally was Darwin’s birthday.

Rossellini briefly talked about three short films, two of which are part of a series she wrote and directed for the Sundance Channel, all developed while getting her master’s degree in animal behavior from Hunter College. But rather than discuss her five-decade career in modeling and film, Rossellini spoke with Horowitz about animal behavior.

Below is an edited version of the conversation.

On Darwin and the Domestication of Wolves

Alexandra Horowitz: The play Link Link Circus was a part of your master’s thesis. Can you tell me what the title means? 

Isabella Rossellini: The link is the link that Charles Darwin refers to when he said there is a link between us and animals. We’re not separated from the world of animals. We evolved, too — [but] that was a controversy at the time. Some people accepted that there was evolution but believed that man was not part of that process. [They believed] man was a divine descendant, we looked like God, and we are not part of nature in that way. So Link Link Circus is to say we have a link with them. And for the circus part, I had a little dog, Darcy, who performed with me, who I dressed up like different animals. She would be a chicken, and then she would be a bee. I called her Pan for Peter Pan, because a stage name is an allusion to reality and linked with domestication.

AH: Darwin studied domestication as part of evolution, and we continue to learn about that. Domestication was likely a self-selection process, but a lot of what you show in the film still holds true.

IR: Yes, exactly. The hardest part of making these films is translating science into something engaging and humorous while keeping it well informed. There are a few mistakes, because science keeps evolving. I made a short film about how the wolf was domesticated into the dog. The first step in domesticating a wild animal is that the animal must be willing to live near humans. To do that, it cannot be aggressive toward us. Over time, this willingness to coexist changes them physically. I initially say that humans domesticated wolves. While that is true to some extent, we now understand that domestication was likely a natural process, and wolves themselves played a role in it.

Guiding Guide Dogs

AH: You trained your dog, Darcy, to perform with you in the play. But unlike the dogs we might be able to train for a show like that, guide dogs have a very different role and training process. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that?

IR: I have been a volunteer for the Guide Dog Foundation for 20 years. I started by being what they call a “puppy walker,” meaning I take a dog about 8 weeks old, but he doesn’t need his mama, because he’s independent. He eats, and I keep him until he’s a year old. Basically, I have to socialize them. When they are going to work serving the person who’s blind, the dog cannot be afraid to be in a room with a lot of people, or on a subway, car, or airplane, so I take them everywhere.

On Darwin, Animal Expression, and Acting

AH: You’ve been performing a theatre piece called Darwin’s Smile. How was the play prompted by you reading one of his not-as-well-known books? 

IR: It’s called The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Some human gestures require bioculture [to understand]. But some are natural. I can always tell whether someone was born blind or became blind later in life just by the way they smile. Both smile, but for those born blind, the smile is less pronounced. We are all born with the ability to express emotions, but culture shapes and refines those expressions over time.

Darwin questioned whether facial expressions evolved like physical traits. For example, when we are afraid, our bodies react instinctively. We smile, we laugh — Darwin even believed that some animals experience laughter.

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Art Informs Science and Vice Versa

AH: In Conclave, which you’re so good in, you don’t have any words in the first half of the film, yet your face speaks volumes. 

IR: Well, this is exactly what we do with animals. They don’t speak, yet they make themselves understood. If you have dogs or cats and the water bowl is empty, they have a way of telling you. There is a body language, an expression of emotions, a kind of language between humans and animals. In the role that I played — that got my Academy Award nomination — I don’t speak, much like my sheep or dog.

AH: What’s so interesting about that Darwin book was that at the time, I don’t think a lot of people were acknowledging that animals might have emotions. In fact, behavioralism, which really overtook the study of animal behavior for most of the 20th century, specifically denied that there was anything internal happening with the animal. Emotions have crept back into the study now, but there’s still a lot of hesitancy. 

IR: Definitely the animals have emotion, and that was one of the things that drove me to go back to university in my 50s. In fact, it is absurd to think that they can’t have emotion, because how do you function in the world without it? It’s like the idea that [behavioral psychologist] Skinner had, that you learn everything by conditioning. So you go to a particular place because there is food. But the world isn’t like this. It is unpredictable. You have to have memories. You have to reason to remember things. You cannot manage life if you don’t have emotion and some conditioning and empathy. 

AH: There’s a lot about acting that seems to me to be very empathetic. You have to think about who your character is and get into the headspace of someone else. But also you’re thinking, what does your writer or director want? There’s an analog between empathy and an actor, and it’s also a way to look at animals.   

IR: If I were ever to do a Ph.D., it would be on the subject of empathy, because I feel that often when we study animals, we don’t use empathy. Empathy is essential among people to communicate. But in research, empathy is taken away because it’s emotional. I cannot relate to my dog or to my sheep without empathy. In acting, you manipulate empathy. If I could contribute as a scientist, I would like to bring that element [to research].

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