Isabella Rossellini on her one-woman show, bee stings, more

When Isabella Rossellini was in her 50s, she thought her days as an actor were coming to an end. So she decided to head back to school and work toward her master's degree in ethology, the study of animal behavior.

She got her degree, but her acting career is far from over. Now 70, Rossellini is still being offered choice roles on screen, TV and the stage. Moviegoers can hear her playing the grandmother in the new animated movie "Marcel the Shell." She's spending part of her summer in France where she's shooting the second season of the HBO Max series "Julia," in which she plays Simone "Simca" Beck, the best friend of TV's "French Chef."

Come Aug. 13 and 14, she'll be back on her home turf when she presents the U.S. premiere of her one-woman show "Darwin's Smile" to the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport where she lives. (She also has a 30-acre farm in Brookhaven.) "Darwin's Smile," which she also wrote is all about her two passions — the connection between animal behavior as it relates to acting. And yes, the show, which is a benefit for Gateway, is very comical as Rossellini transforms herself into a peacock, a chimpanzee and even naturalist Charles Darwin,

Rossellini recently spoke by phone from her home about her fascination with animals, her life on Long Island and the worst bee sting she ever experienced.

How did "Darwin’s Smile" come about?

This is my third monologue I wrote. … After my studies in ethology, I wrote several short films that became quite popular on YouTube. And out of those came two monologues that I did. One of them I performed at the Gateway two years ago called Link Link Circus. This new one connects all the dots because it's about acting and animal behavior. … A few years ago, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris did a show about art that reflected the shock of Darwin's theory of evolution. They asked me to do a conference, because I do these comical things about animals. So I was very honored. I presented a conference called “Darwin’s Smile.“ A theater director and producer came to see it and they asked me to develop it further and make it into a monologue. We premiered it in France in April and now we’re touring it in America.

Supporting local arts venues like the Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center [in Patchogue] and the Gateway is very important to you it seems.

The Plaza and the Gateway offer such fantastic shows. At the end of the day to be able to go take my grandchildren to see "The Little Mermaid" or see a foreign film at the Plaza is such a privilege because you always feel that you have to go to the city to do it. I don’t want to have to get on a train and schlep two hours to go do that, I want it to happen here. I love that it’s available to me in an easy way. So I always say, I don’t do it as an impulse of generosity, I do it as an impulse of making life more interesting for all of us.

How did you come to live on Long Island in the first place?

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. The I bought a house in Bellport because you could access the ferry and 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.” . It was 15 years ago, when I came to stay on Long Island on a steady basis and gave up my apartment in New York.

You've mentioned your farm in Brookhaven. Do you do a lot of the farming chores, like feeding the chickens or milking the cows?

I buy the chickens and decide what they eat. I have somebody who goes there and feeds them and cleans the coops. I do work with bees and when I come back [from shooting "Julia"|. we’ll do honey extraction and honey harvesting,

Have you ever gotten stung?

Always, always, always. In my Instagram, one time a bee stung me on the cheek and I had one big huge cheek. And I was about to start shooting on my HBO series. So it was a problem. My face completely looked like a Picasso painting. [Laughs.] It took a couple of days for it to come back to normal.