Jodie Foster

Interview By: Freddie LaFemina
FreddieLaFemina @TheCinemaSource.com

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It's always a special occasion when Jodie Foster stars in a film. As Foster is quick to note, 'I don't make three movies a year. I make one movie sometimes every three years.' And while this doesn't guarantee that all the films she stars in garner universal critical acclaim, she hasn't done too badly for herself with this metric. She is one of only a dozen actresses in the nearly eighty-year history of the Academy Awards to have won twice for Best Actress in a Leading Role, once for The Accused in 1988 and again only a few years later for her memorable role as FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, which won a total of five Oscars (including Best Picture) in 1991.

Since Foster doesn't make films as often as many top actors and actresses today (who are often doing multiple projects every year), each film she chooses to make, according to her, 'has to stand for something'There has to be something in it that is moving to me and'by extension, is terrifically moving to other people.' It seems Ms. Foster knows how to pick 'em, yet she is still very humble about her work. 'I'm really picky about what I choose, and it doesn't mean that the scripts I make are all perfect,' she says. Foster's humility and sense of purpose comes through when she talks about the previous film she worked on, the airplane thriller Flightplan, which was among the top 20 grossing films of 2005. 'Flightplan is not a perfect movie, and it's not an arthouse film. It is a genre movie and I make no apologies for that, but I really feel like that character was beautifully drawn, truthfully drawn, and I'm really proud of it as an actor.' Speaking about the film's box office success, Foster says, 'I'm really happy that everybody seemed to go.'

Foster is one of very few leading actresses whose involvement in a project can ensure with a high degree of certainty both widespread attendance and positive critical reception. She has no problem 'calling [herself] a feminist with a capital F.' For Foster, 'feminism and humanism are pretty much the same thing'I hope that I inject humanism in the movies that I make.' While she acknowledges that she brings something specific and unique to each role because she is a woman, she is also quite proud of the fact that her roles in many films could have easily been played by men. Her role in Flightplan was actually written for a man, and her role in Inside Man as a confident yet deferential power broker ' a kind of 'fixer figure' according to Foster ' 'could have easily been a man, and I really don't know why they wrote this character as a woman. I'm really happy they did'and I love playing parts that could've been a guy or a girl.' Of course, 'when you put a different gender in this circumstance'it changes everything, and it fuels it with a completely different feeling and a different sense of history,' and it is this aspect of unisex roles that is seemingly both challenging and fascinating for Foster.

Foster was also interested in this role because of her character's 'wit and breeziness,' which reflects her neutrality and her resultant lack of morality in the crises from which she profits. 'She's somebody who doesn't judge, and most of the time that's a good thing'at the same time she's sort of neutral'and it does make her morally wrong, because she's negotiating between evils.' Foster believes her character's lack of commitment and the fact there is little personally at stake for her in any of these situations is 'what makes her so sinister.' For these reasons, Foster considers her character a 'bad guy.' Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, Foster liked this role so much that she says, 'I wish I could play this character for a whole film. I wish I could play her in other circumstances, because I don't think I've seen it on screen.'

And what was it like working with Denzel Washington' 'I've been waiting to work with Denzel for twenty years,' Foster says. Though she only had a few scenes with Denzel in this film, Foster says of her co-star, 'He is truly the best actor I've ever worked with.' Also, the supporting role allowed Foster to watch her co-stars lead the film while she quietly cultivated her own character. 'It's a wonderful freeing thing to be able to play a supporting part, because you don't have to be the head banana hero that everybody relates to,' she says. 'You can be somebody people can't relate to.' Doing a supporting role also allows an actor to 'get cast in things that normally you wouldn't be cast for,' as Foster was able to do in the 2004 French film, A Very Long Engagement.

Still, there is no doubt that Foster has reached a point in her career in which she wants to make films that have something to say but will also be accessible to a wide audience. 'I like taking mainstream movies that I feel have a heart to them'and having extremely directors from a different walk of life come in and approach them.' This is precisely the reason she was intrigued by Inside Man. 'Spike Lee doing a movie that's a bank heist movie is exciting to me,' she says.

Now interested in pursuing directing more vigorously than ever before (she directed Little Man Tate and Home for the Holidays in the 90s), Foster was interested in working with Lee 'just to stand behind his shoulder and see how he sees it.' She admits, 'That's the impulse now to make films as an actress'to watch the directors and see what they're doing.' Foster is 'attracted to completely different movies as a director than I would be as an actor.' Foster's next directing project is Sugarland, which she will both direct and star in alongside Robert DeNiro. Shooting for her next acting project, The Brave One, a thriller co-starring the in-high-demand Terrence Howard, will begin in two months.

While she is involved in more projects now than she has been in quite a while, Foster seems keen on maintaining a healthy and private personal life, pursuing interests that are valuable in themselves and that also serve to make her a better actress. 'As an actor, you have to be somebody in order to play someone, so you have to be able to have time where you're not an actor or not a celebrity, so that you can actually be a person of substance,' she says. That is why she chooses to make fewer films. As she acknowledges, 'If I made three movies a year, I can guarantee you I would have no idea what's going on in the New York Times. I wouldn't have listened to a record. I wouldn't have gotten my own coffee for a whole year.'

Despite her detachment from the celebrity lifestyle that Hollywood offers, Foster is still a great fan of its cinema. 'I see everything that comes out, even the bad ones,' she says. 'I think if I could do one thing on a day off'I'd go see a film.' Trading in the priceless activities of everyday life in for more films or more awards or more money just doesn't seem a viable option for Foster. Having been raised in the industry, she realized at a very young age that she 'had to put [her] foot down about [her] life.' Forty years later, she doesn't seem to have strayed from the path one bit.