Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann

miss · May 13, 2008

:heart: nice pics of her...

credit: Fabulyss at tfs

Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann: a model daughter

Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/04/2008

A top model as well as a student of biomedicine, Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann is a classy mix of brains and beauty. But then, with Isabella Rossellini for a mother and Ingrid Bergman for a grandmother, could she ever have been anything else? By Daisy Garnett

She may well be perfect. Elettra - even her name is super-hero fabulous - Rossellini Wiedemann is a 24-year-old model and student, and living proof that the progeny of famous human thoroughbreds don't necessarily buckle under the weight of expectation and example.

Let's start with the roll-call: her mother is Isabella Rossellini, which makes Ingrid Bergman her grandmother and Roberto Rossellini her grandfather. Her paternal grandparents, meanwhile, Americans of German descent, live in Texas. They are in their eighties, 'but still climb mountains and travel the world and take their grandkids to Japan and stuff'. Their son, Jon Wiedemann, Elettra's father, is a Harvard-educated executive at Microsoft who was a model (he and Rossellini met on a Calvin Klein shoot) and lives in Seattle with his second wife and children - in their spare time they run marathons and compete in Iron Man challenges.

And here is Elettra. When I meet her she has just finished shooting for French Vogue, and has landed a beauty contract with Lanc�me as the 'face' of Hydra Zen moisturiser and Color Ideal foundation. So, yes, she is beautiful and successful and stylish (she wears black jeans, a tailored jacket and a large mustard scarf perfectly knotted around her neck), and, yes, she is already rich in her own right. She grew up in New York, but is about to move to London to start a master's degree in biomedicine, which means her brain isn't too shabby, either.

What is biomedicine? 'It's a lot of things,' says Wiedemann, 'but, basically, institutional reform in light of climate change. The programme focuses on human health and there will be classes on ethical reform; things of that nature.' Oh. OK. Will she model while studying? 'I will,' she says. 'The course is two years long and, after all, I modelled throughout college and managed to graduate.'

Wiedemann did her BA in international relations at the New School, a university in New York. Her first modelling job was with Bruce Weber for the American label Abercrombie & Fitch. She got the Lanc�me job, she explains, because the president of the company, Odile Roujol, saw a photograph of her and thought her looks - fair skin, brown hair, almond-shaped eyes - would appeal to the Asian market in particular. Only then, so the story goes, did Roujol discover whom the face belonged to - what Wiedemann calls 'the whole mum connection'. Isabella Rossellini was the face of Lanc�me for 14 years. That, Wiedemann says, 'made them go back and forth. But eventually we signed and here I am.'

'It's not easy,' she says about combining modelling with a degree. 'But it's doable. You're pretty much busy all the time, but that's OK. I like being busy, and I enjoy modelling hugely as long as I'm also doing something else. Because there are weeks when I'm working every day from nine to midnight ten days in a row, but then a month might go by when nobody calls, and if the only thing you have to do is workout then you go a bit crazy.' Does she workout a lot? She does. 'I'm addicted to the gym, actually,' she explains, matter-of-factly. 'Or rather to exercise. I try not to go every day because I don't think it's so good for you to do that, but I do interval-training with a trainer five or six times a week. It sucks, but it's great for your endurance, and it transforms your body.'

Is she under pressure to do that? Her body, as you might expect, is wonderfully long, rangy and narrow: very thin of course, but not emaciated as you sometimes see on the catwalks. And, unlike many of her peers, Wiedemann is actually more beautiful in the flesh than she is in photographs. Is she ever asked to lose weight? Certainly at lunch, though declaring she is hungry, she eats like a bird: a tiny portion of seabass, hot water with lemon to drink, and an espresso. She turns away the tray of petits fours, saying, 'I'd love to but I can't.

There is always pressure to be thinner,' she says with a certain weariness. 'No one says anything to me actively, but if I lost ten pounds everyone would be, "Oh, you look fabulous." But at some point you have to use your brain and say this is my limit. I exercise, I'm healthy, I don't drink, I don't smoke.' She doesn't drink? 'I haven't drunk this year. I got sick at the end of last year and I can't quite shake it off so I just decided to let my body heal. That's why I'm eating vegan as much as possible, too. But I don't miss drinking. I exercise so much and if you've been eating badly or drinking you feel it. I hate feeling weak or sick or anything.'

See what I mean about being perfect? Wiedemann also speaks fluent French (she attended a French high school in New York) and Italian (she went to Milan five years ago for three weeks' modelling work and ended up staying two years), and has a reputation as a conscientious 'green' model, by asking Lanc�me to offset the carbon footprint created by the air travel she does for them. 'Our entire system of living is built on an un-environmentally friendly model,' she says. 'I'm studying it so I can understand more how I can help big companies change, or help governments change, or people change their lifestyle.'

I ask Wiedemann if she's a perfectionist. 'Yeah,' she says. 'A little bit. I am tough with myself. But I never drive myself nuts. I can fly to the Bahamas and chill out for a week. But in order to play hard you have to work hard. I'm young, but I won't be forever and I want to get the most out of my energy now. One day, hopefully, I'll have a family and kids, and I won't have time to do all this fun stuff, so let's do it and let's do it well.'

There is no doubting Wiedemann's clear thinking and high standards. She also has firm boundaries. If she one day hopes to start a family, is she now in a relationship? 'I don't like to talk about that stuff,' she says. 'Sorry. Open that door and it never closes. You know?' What about her own childhood? 'I had a great childhood,' she says blankly. She refuses to acknowledge the interest that being the daughter of Isabella Rossellini, herself the product of that controversial romance between Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, arouses. 'Yeah, but she's also my mum. She is who she is.'

Did she ever feel overshadowed by her mother? 'I think if you say I'm in her shadow it means I'm competitive with her, and I'm not really.' No, I say, I mean more that you might have grown up feeling intimidated or shy or resentful or any number of things that offspring of successful and beautiful parents often feel. Wiedemann, I have read, had to wear a back brace from 12 to 17 because she suffered from scoliosis. Wasn't that hard in the face of such perfection? 'Maybe initially people compared us, or tried to place all this weight on meeting me because of her,' she says. 'But I think they quickly abandoned it because I'm so different. I'm American, she's Italian, we've got completely different personalities, and we don't look alike at all.' And about wearing the brace 23 hours a day for five years she just says: 'It wasn't great, but I went to the United Nations High School, so everyone was different in their own way.'

She and Rossellini Snr don't look that different though. And their professional lives aren't a million miles apart either. Rossellini was quoted as saying that she couldn't have been more pleased about the Lanc�me contract than if Wiedemann had told her she was getting married or pregnant. Really? 'My mum's a businesswoman,' she replies, shrugging her shoulders. 'She knew it meant I would get to travel and experience new things, and that I'd be financially independent. So, yes, she was happy that I would have the opportunities that I've had, as am I.' She pauses. She is so businesslike, the beautiful Elettra Wiedemann, so smart, so articulate, so exacting, so professional. And then, just as it all seems too good to be true, she softens for a moment and acknowledges that not everything is within one's own control. 'It's like winning the lottery,' she says and smiles.

Skirt and T-shirt by Dolce & Gabbana. Jacket by KL Karl Lagerfeld. Shoes by Christian Louboutin. Make-up by Lanc�me. Styling by Hew Hood