Pioneering photographer Eve Arnold is equally famed for her intimate portrayals of Hollywood as forher global reportage. Here, actress Isabella Rossellini celebrates the life and work of her friend and role model

EVE Arnold is small with white hair collected in a neat bun. Everything she wears is elegant and reveals a bit of her nomadic life - a scarf from India, earrings from Mongolia, a cashmere sweater from England - and she is barefoot.

Her bare feet worried me when I first met her as she was running around the set of the film White Nights, my debut American film, in 1983. She was taking photos of everybody on the set, but especially of the principal actors, Misha Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Helen Mirren and myself. "What if she steps on a nail?" I thought. "Does she have to tiptoe around us so as not to be noticed and take candid photos?" If she saw me noticing the camera, she stopped photographing me.

I was used to posing for photographers in my career as a model. I posed being very aware of the camera, of the angles and framing, and slightly changing my position accordingly. Photographers like Avedon would direct me: "Change your thought." He seemed to really see what I was thinking. Once, I tested him. I disobeyed, and went back to my original thought, the one he had asked me not to have. He caught it immediately and said, "No, I told you not that thought." Photographers see everything, it's scary.

Eve didn't like me posing. She was a photo reporter, after all. She once told me: "I just hope to be fast enough to catch the image I'm after." "Just like a hunter," I thought. She saw, she snatched. Through Eve's eyes, I have travelled to many distant places, have seen what I always wished to see: the birth of a baby; a harem; life in a remote village in China; or Malcolm X, and Marilyn Monroe ... now, just think for a minute about these two last names: Malcolm X and Marilyn Monroe. Don't they give you the incredible range of what Eve has photographed?

"What makes you tick?" I asked. "If you were to define in one word, what is the engine that powers you, what would that word be?" She answered: "Curiosity." That answer stayed with me. Eve is more than a photographer who took my picture. She is even more than a friend. She is a role model to me. I observed her, I studied her, and wanted to understand how Eve became Eve. I want curiosity to become my engine too.

She was one of the first women to join the prestigious photo agency Magnum, founded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Eve dealt with men like a man. I have never seen her flirtatious, delicate or coy. Eve is always direct, strong, together and infinitely benevolent. In her eyes there is always a twinkle, a smile and lots of warmth.

I saw Eve often, as often as I could. We talked about children, about friends and about politics. She never talked in an intellectual way, but in a "hands-on" way. When talking about politics, she would say, "Indira Gandhi told me ...", or "Malcolm X said ..." When talking about cinema, she would say, "John Huston said to me ... John Schlesinger told me ... Marilyn Monroe and I ..."

Eve's intimacy with people is revealed in her photos. Her subjects are relaxed and spontaneous in front of her lens. How did she do it? How did she conquer the trust of such revered people? I knew that answer as soon as I met her. She loves life and human beings, and that's what she is after. With her compassionate eyes and her sense of humour, she is there pointing her lens to take the picture of a human being behind the star, behind the politician, behind the destitute and behind the child.

I told her once: "I always like having you around me taking photos. Instead of being spied on by you, I feel protected. How is that? Do the others feel the same? Are you barefoot to tiptoe around us so we are not aware of you?" "Barefoot?" She said. "Oh. That's because I have a bunion." Stupid me. I had made up all these theories about how she approached her subjects tiptoeing barefoot ... Forget about it. I cannot describe Eve.

On my kitchen wall, amidst the photos of my children and parents, I have photos that Eve gave me of her work. They always make me smile. Her compassion, her irony and her humour present in the photo is comforting to me; a reminder of her look on life that I'd like to make mine.

I also have a photo of Eve made by another photographer friend, Brigitte Lacomb. In the photo, Eve is captured straddling a chair, her white hair collected in the neat bun, waving her hands in front of her, and smiling.

I know what she is saying: "No photos of me please."

Extract and photographs from Eve Arnold's People, published by Thames & Hudson, priced £19.95