Isabella Rossellini attended the 2025 Academy Awards with her own honor secured: a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as a nun in the political thriller Conclave. But she made headlines by deflecting the attention elsewhere—wearing a blue velvet dress as a tribute to late filmmaker David Lynch, with whom she collaborated on the 1986 neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet.
Rossellini acknowledged the tribute briefly on the red carpet and on social media, writing on Instagram, “I wore blue velvet as an homage [to] David Lynch. We did a film together by this title.” Her jewelry, meanwhile, included the earrings her mother, late actress Ingrid Bergman, wore “when she won the Oscar.” (Bergman won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the 1974 mystery film Murder on the Orient Express.)
Make-up artist Matin Maulawizada posted about the fashion choices on Instagram, writing that Rossellini’s nod to her character, abused lounge singer Dorothy Vallens, extended beyond the flowing dress: “Of course the character makeup was more rough around the edges and was meant as an artistic expression of a woman on stage, but we adapted the look to fit the red carpet.”
Rossellini has a long history with Lynch, the visionary surrealist filmmaker who co-created the mystery-horror series Twin Peaks and helmed a handful of provocative and influential features, including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Dr. Their first collaboration was their most notable: Blue Velvet—which co-stars Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, and Dennis Hopper—earned Lynch his second Oscar nomination for Best Director and is widely regarded as one of the era’s finest films.
In an in-depth interview with SAG-AFTRA, Rossellini noted that Lynch pictured Helen Mirren in the Vallens role—and during a dinner, he even tried to enlist her help in recruitment.
“[He] found out that I’d just finished White Nights with Helen Mirren, and he wanted very much Helen Mirren to be in Blue Velvet, playing my role,” she said. “He kept on saying, ‘Give me her phone number!’ I said, ‘No! She’s a star. You don’t give out phone numbers of stars. The next day, I received a note with a script, and he said, ‘On second thought, would you like to consider the role?’ … To me, it was a portrait of a battered woman—maybe somebody who had Stockholm syndrome.” She also shared some of Lynch’s famously unorthodox direction, including moody and ethereal guidance like, “The clouds are coming.”
According to various sources, including Variety, the pair began a roughly five-year relationship soon after Blue Velvet. They also wound up collaborating again on Lynch’s next film, 1990’s Wild at Heart, with Rossellini playing a small but pivotal role in the bizarre crime-thriller, which co-stars Dern and Nicolas Cage.
Lynch died in January 2025 at age 78, months after being diagnosed with emphysema. He left behind an inimitable catalog, including, from 2017, the acclaimed third season of Twin Peaks—his latest major cinematic project. The film world grieved his loss, as did Rossellini, who wrote on Instagram, “I loved him so much.”
The actress earned her Oscar nomination days after Lynch’s death, and in an Instagram post celebrating the moment, she found herself reflecting on her old creative partner: “And also today with this joy in my mind can’t help lingering in the beyond to David Lynch,” she wrote. “Our collaboration was key to my understanding of the art of [acting].”
