Her role is small, with no more than a couple of minutes of dialogue. But it would be hard to find a more immaculate proof of Stanislavski’s famous edict that “there are no small roles, only small actors” than the simmering power of what Isabella Rossellini does in  her turn as a nun serving a congregation of cardinals as they struggle to elect a new pope in Conclave. Based on the 2016 bestseller by Robert Harris, this taut thriller (opening in theaters Oct. 25) emerged from the Toronto International Festival as a leading Oscar contender for Best Picture. And Ralph Fiennes, 61  – who gives the performance of his life as a soul-seeking cardinal trapped in a cloak-and-dagger intrigue of Vatican politics – is a clear front-runner for Best Actor.

But the film’s stealth weapon, its silent dagger, is Rossellini.

As Sister Agnes, who presides over a brigade of nuns who cook and clean for the cardinals,  the 72-year-old actress  is a mute observer for most of the film. But she carries a potent secret, uncovered in sly increments. We know she will inevitably break her silence, and when she does – telling the cardinals that “although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has given us eyes and ears” – it can be said without spoilers that she shatters their world by barely raising her voice.

“For a role so quiet and restrained, you want someone who has an aura, who stays in our mind without doing much,” the film’s German director, Edward Berger, told me in a joint interview with Rossellini after the film’s TIFF premiere. “And who comes to mind but Isabella for an iconic, charismatic person – where the audience goes, ‘Oh, I’m interested in that person. What’s she doing in these proceedings?’ That was the gift that Isabella gave us. She settled into the role with a certainty and calmness. You really felt that kind of liberated wisdom on the set.”

On the heels of last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which won four Oscars, Berger, 54, makes his English-language debut with Conclave, which is sublimely directed, without the usual Hollywood trappings. As Rossellini listens to him sing her praises, she deflects each beat with a flow of gentle, bubbling laughter, as if he were talking about someone else.

She looks radiant. Swathed in a confident array of unmatching colours, she wears a long French-blue dress with floral panels, framed by a saffron robe that unfurls over her chair to reveal a bold black-and-white lining. From the persimmon lipstick to matte-black boots that fit like gloves, she is a regal antithesis of the pale, austere nun she plays in Conclave.

For Rossellini, shooting Conclave brought back fond memories of being schooled by nuns as a child growing up in Italy. And Rossellini she says could relate to the invisibility of her character, this monochrome cipher who holds the key to a costume drama ruled by conniving  men in red. “Nowadays,” she says, “when women grow old they sometimes complain of becoming invisible. Women feel they have to be attractive. Then at a certain age you accept who you are. It’s a fact of life that you can’t do much more than this. And that is what I loved about Sister Agnes. She takes a vow and profoundly pays respect to silence and obedience as a reminder that human beings are faulted. I saw that in the nuns I went to school with. They didn’t have that giggly, seductive thing with men. And I saw that in mama too. She had me [and Isabella’s fraternal twin, Isotta, known as Ingrid] when she was in her 40s. She had a career, she was an adult woman who was like, ‘This is who I am.’ Simple.”

“Mama” was Swedish screen legend Ingrid Bergman, while dad was Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. Though their seven-year marriage ended in divorce when Isabella was five, she says they remained her greatest influence. While her father wasn’t keen on her facing the perils of an acting career, she said her mother encouraged her: “Mama loved acting. But she always said, ‘I didn’t choose acting – acting chose me’. . . Almost like a calling to be a nun.”

Nuns seem to run in the family. Bergman famously played one, opposite Bing Crosby’s priest in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). And three decades later Isabella would make her screen acting debut as a nun at the bedside of a dying countess played by her mother in A Matter of Time (1976) – a film on which Isabella’s sister Ingrid also worked, as a makeup artist. Bergman basically cast Isabella in the film: “Mama thought that it would be fun having two children on the set in Rome. But also, because mama and I look alike, she thought it would be an added thing that, while dying, [her character] sees herself as a nun.”

In the third act of a career lived in the glare of the spotlight, from starring in David Lynch’s sexually provocative Blue Velvet to modelling for Lancôme, Rossellini now embraces the relative invisibility afforded by age as “a relief.” Meanwhile she’s carved out new realms of independence writing and directing short films about animal behavior (Green Porno) and founding a regenerative farm and B&B in Long Island, NY. She recalls her mother once confiding to her, “You know, Bella, I can be a director,” but saying it “like it was incredible, like being an astronaut – she worked with the best, but it never occurred to her to direct, or to option a book and produce it for herself.”

Now that she’s not limited by acting, Rossellini has found a new freedom in small character roles. And counter-intuitively, with her sleeper-cell performance in Conclave, she turns the invisibility of Sister Agnes into a kind of feminist superpower. Under Berger’s subtle direction, she first appears in quick glimpses, a black-and-white enigma slipping down corridors and around corners. She eventually comes face to face with Fiennes, as this Dean of Cardinals realizes she holds the key to his investigation into some sinister backroom dealing. After he gently explains his mission to Agnes, almost beholden to this literal mother superior, her response consists of a silent 10-second close-up.

With no visible makeup, the complexion is pallid, the eyes are circled with fatigue. An unsmiling expression gives nothing away. But behind her unblinking stare we can detect the authority of a mind at work, calculating her next, most impactful move.  

This is an Isabella Rossellini we haven’t seen before – an actress who spent much of her career as a model, meeting the camera’s gaze head on, showing us the unadorned beauty of who’s boss.

If only her mother could see her now.

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