Isabella Rossellini Refutes Roger Ebert’s Claim That David Lynch ‘Exploited Me’ in ‘Blue Velvet’: ‘I Was an Adult. I Chose to Play the Character’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director One of the most infamous reviews for David Lynch‘s “Blue Velvet” to publish when the film opened in 1986 came courtesy of Roger Ebert, who gave the movie one star.

Among Ebert’s several criticisms was how Lynch could cast Isabella Rossellini in a role where she gets “humiliated” and then proceed to put it in such an unimportant movie. “[Rossellini] is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve…She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera,” Ebert wrote. “And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.” Rossellini stars in “Blue Velvet” as the tormented nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, who is held emotionally and physically captive by the sociopath gangster Frank Booth (Denis Hopper).

At one point in the film, Dorothy shows up naked on the front porch of Jeffrey Beaumont’s (Kyle MacLachlan) home completely disoriented and saying, “He put his disease in me.” In the classic, she plays nightclub lounge singer Dorothy Vallens, held psychically and physically captive by Dennis Hopper’s nitrous-huffing, psychopathic gangster Frank Booth.

And as anyone who’s seen the film remembers, Dorothy stumbles naked, beaten, onto Kyle MacLachlan’s porch, saying to his family in their living room, “He put his disease in me.” “I didn’t read the reviews at the time [‘Blue Velvet’] came out.