When Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini steps onto the Miami Book Fair International stage Thursday night to read from her new book, Green Porno, her audience may be captivated less by her writing skills than her star power.

Model, actress, filmmaker, author and philanthropist, Rossellini joins the long list of celebrities -- Faye Dunaway, Judy Collins, Martha Stewart, Hunter S. Thompson, Loni Anderson and Barack Obama, for starters -- who have visited during the fair over the years.

Still, organizers say fame does no factor in whom they choose to invite.

``It's not as if we have a club and are inviting a celebrity to come promote the space,'' says Mitchell Kaplan, fair co-founder. ``A lot of these books are really extensions of who they are as authors.''

Still, to say that Green Porno, Rossellini's third book, is a curiosity is an understatement. It is the culmination of a project begun in 2008 when Rossellini, known for her ecological activism, was approached by the Sundance Channel to write, direct and star in a series of two-minute films to be viewed online and on tiny cellphone screens. They are included in a DVD packaged with the book.

``A lot of book publishing houses, as you know, are having a very big crisis,'' Rossellini says from her home in Long Island. ``So I think the idea was to find out if you can translate success on the Internet into a successful book.''

The Green Porno shorts, like the book, use brightly colored sets and simple costumes to bring a sense of innocence and playfulness to some scientifically accurate and thematically adult material. There was tremendous potential that the elegant Rossellini might come off as ridiculous as she transforms into a male spider, dragonfly or limpet and sets out to copulate with a female.

``I'm not constantly thinking about my career and my image,'' she says. ``That's agent talk. I just take advantages of opportunities that come up to do interesting things.''

With their occasional veers into sudden violence (oh, the poor male bee!), the Green Porno shorts often recall the work of David Lynch, with whom Rossellini lived for five years after doing for him what few actresses would in Blue Velvet, including a scene in which she is plopped onto a front lawn, naked, crying and despondent.

Rossellini admits that she will always be associated with the character of nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens and remembers that ``when Blue Velvet came out, a lot of people tried to find reasons for not liking it. . . . They would say `David Lynch is evil!' or `Isabella Rossellini is doing it to spite Lancome,' '' the cosmetics giant that had ended her contract.

``But it wasn't any of that, really. David told me that when he was a little boy, he was coming home from school with his brother, and they saw a naked woman walking down the street. Instead of getting curious or titillated or aroused, they got very frightened and burst into tears. That's what he wanted to capture in that scene.''

That Rossellini, born the instantly famous daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini, will capture her book-fair audience is a given.

Yet even the definition of celebrity is ``in the eye of the beholder,'' Kaplan says.

The fair is famous for its lineup of stars in the literary world who don't regularly grace magazine covers or movie screens. Sunday and Monday nights, hundreds of people packed a large conference room hear novelists Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver.

And celebrity status doesn't always guarantee big crowds.

In 2007, Rosie O'Donnell was greeted by rows of empty seats at her traditionally standing-room-only book-fair opening.

Nonetheless, Miami has always been a magnet for celebrities, and their presence at the fair, held at Miami Dade College's downtown Wolfson Campus, helps put the long-neglected area on the map, says Eduardo Padron, MDC president and fair co-founder.

``We attract people who have accomplished in all areas, including politics and journalism,'' he says. ``But the fair goes out of its way to treat all authors like the real celebrities they are.''

Miami Herald staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.

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