Elettra Rossellini, Out of Her Mother's Shadow

By DAISY GARNETT, The Daily Telegraph
May 6, 2008

She may well be perfect. Elettra — even her name is superhero 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.

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Carlo Buscemi

ON THE RUNWAY Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann, photographed as a Diae von Furstenberg fashion show, plans to continue to model while she pursues a graduate degree.

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. 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 here is Elettra. When I meet her she has just finished shooting for French Vogue, and has landed a beauty contract with Lancôme. 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.

Will she model while studying? "I will," she says. "The course is two years long and, after all, I modeled throughout college and managed to graduate."

Ms. Wiedemann did her bachelor's degree in international relations at the New School. Her first modeling job was for Abercrombie & Fitch. She got the Lancôme 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 Ms. Roujol discover what Ms. Wiedemann calls "the whole mum connection." Isabella Rossellini was the face of Lancôme for 14 years.

As you might expect, Ms. Wiedemann's body is wonderfully long, rangy, and narrow: very thin of course, but not emaciated as you sometimes see on the catwalks.

"There is always pressure to be thinner," she says with a certain weariness. "No one says anything to me actively, but if I lost 10 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."

I ask Ms. 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."

Ms. 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," she says, referring to her mother, "or tried to place all this weight on meeting me because of her. 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."

She and her mother don't look that different, though. And their professional lives aren't a million miles apart either. Isabella Rossellini was quoted as saying that she couldn't have been more pleased about the Lancôme contract than if Ms. 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.