'Conclave' Oscar nominee Isabella Rossellini is a patron of the arts on Long Island

Isabella Rossellini, who received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for "Conclave," also was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role. Credit: Getty Images / Amy Sussman
After nearly five decades of working in films, Isabella Rossellini can finally add the words "Oscar nominee" to her resume. The veteran actor, who lives in Bellport and runs a 28-acre farm in Brookhaven, earned her first supporting actress nomination Thursday for her role as a nun in the papal drama "Conclave."
"I wish my parents were alive to celebrate with me this great honor," Rossellini posted on Instagram Thursday morning referring to her mother, three-time Oscar-winning actress Ingrid Bergman, and her father, director Roberto Rossellini.
She also paid tribute to filmmaker David Lynch, who died last week and had directed her in 1986's "Blue Velvet" and 1990's "Wild at Heart." "And, also, today, with this joy, my mind can't help lingering in the beyond to David Lynch. Our collaboration was key to my understanding of the art of acting," she wrote of their yearslong professional and romantic relationship in the late 1980s.
Rossellini, 72, has shared her passion for acting on her home turf and has been a longtime patron of the arts on Long Island. She has been a frequent presence at The Gateway in Bellport, where she performed her original science-themed works "Link Link Circus" in 2019 and "Darwin's Smile" in 2022 to benefit the theater.
Last Mother's Day, she and Oscar winner Laura Dern hosted a performance of the one-woman play "Confessions of a Mulatto Love Child" written by and starring Bellina Logan at Rossellini's Mama Farm Bed & Breakfast as a fundraiser for Gateway.
In 2023, Rossellini did two performances of "Darwin's Smile" at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, one of which was followed by a Q&A with her. Rossellini, an avid science buff, was also treated to a tour of neuroscientist Helen Hou’s lab for an up-close look at Hou’s studies of facial expressions in mice.
Rossellini has also been a staunch supporter of Long Island's two most notable cinema art houses. In May, she appeared at Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington for a screening of her 2023 film "La Chimera" and stayed afterward for a Q&A. In 2014, she was the guest at Patchogue's Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center's screening of the 1942 classic "Casablanca" starring Humphrey Bogart and her mother. Last March, Rossellini attended a screening of "Problemista," Julian Torres' surrealist 2023 comedy in which she plays the narrator.
Three years ago, Rossellini told Newsday how she came to make Long Island her permanent home in 2007. It had to do with a family decision. The mother of two has daughter Elettra Wiedemann from her former marriage in the early '80s to Jon Wiedemann, and son Roberto, whom she adopted as an infant the following decade.
"I had an apartment in New York City and a little house on the East End where I used to come for a couple of weeks in the summer," she said. "Then I bought a house in Bellport because you could access the ferry and I was so happy coming here on the weekends. My son was always crying Sunday nights because he didn’t want to go back in the city, and one day I said, 'Roberto, high school is a good moment to change school. I said you’ll just sign up in a school on Long Island and we’ll go and live there.' ”
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