Jodie Foster Profile
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19,
1962) is an American actress, director, and producer who has worked in films
and on television. She has often been cited as one of the best actresses of her
generation. Foster began her career at the age of three as a child model in
1965, and two years later moved to acting in television series, with the sitcom
Mayberry R.F.D. being her debut. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked
in several primetime television series and starred in children's films.
Foster's breakthrough came in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), in which
she played a teenage prostitute; the role garnered her a nomination for an
Academy Award. Her other critically acclaimed roles as a teenager were in the
musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the
Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky
Friday (1976), Candleshoe (1977) and Foxes (1980).
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Jodie Foster on making a popcorn movie with smarts
Jodie Foster is as surprised as anyone that the fourth film
she's directed, "Money Monster," is coming out in the summer among
the likes of Avengers and Angry Birds.
"I don't spend a lot of time going to movies in the
summer because there's not a lot I want to see," says Foster. "I
think people are sick of entertainment that really is just about grabbing their
ticket sales. Maybe this is an alternative."
"Money Monster," out May 13, stands as one of this
summer's most striking exceptions. It's one of few wholly original wide-release
films targeting adults, and one of only two major studio movies directed by a
woman. (The other is Thea Sharrock's romance "Me Before You.")
The film stars George Clooney as a Jim Cramer-esque finance
guru named Lee Gates, who's taken hostage on live television by a distraught,
bankrupted viewer (Jack O'Connell). Gates' producer (Julia Roberts), in the
control booth, remains in his earpiece throughout the ordeal. The thriller
unfolds in real time, gradually revealing the deeper roots of media
manipulation and economic inequality.
"The movie's very meaningful to me," Foster said
in a recent interview. "It has a lot of resonance about the modern world
and my feelings about it, about failure and how wrapped up we all are in our
ideas of value. All that stuff is meaningful to me, and then you wake up and
go, 'Wow, I made a popcorn movie.'"
Foster, 53, has previously directed "Little Man
Tate," "Home for the Holidays" and "The Beaver," but
this is her first studio film (for Sony Pictures). She grants that there were
"a lot of opinions to navigate" but hopes her film — a kind of
combination of "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon" — has
something of Sidney Lumet's spirit in it.
A two-time Oscar winner and 2013 lifetime honoree at the
Golden Globes (where she made that famously passionate and vague speech),
Foster has followed the increased attention to gender equality in Hollywood
with a mix of cynicism and pride. She believes a complicated issue has been
reduced to buzz words, but also that change is long overdue.
"There have always been, although not in the greatest
numbers, independent female filmmakers. There's always been international
filmmakers that were women," she says. "It really was America that
has been the last in the mainstream arena."
One thing Foster questions is if women should even want some
of the blockbuster directing jobs that nearly always go to men, but might
rather pursue different types of films. "It took us this long to get here
and I think women are very sensitive to not throwing away their dreams when
they finally get a taste of their dreams," she says.
"Money Monster" was shaped in important ways by
its director. Roberts' character, Foster says, "originally was just a
woman who said 'Go to one,' 'Go to two.'" It's an example of the many
qualities Foster — uncommonly direct, fiercely honest, uncompromising — brings
to the table.
Speaking about her determination as a director, she's
typically frank.
"It's shocking how little I've been able to figure out
how to get movies off the ground and to find opportunities for personal
films," Foster says. "I do really want to focus on this. But you
actually have to carve out the time. The acting, it will suck everything else
out. You can't squeeze in a director's career. You have to go out on a ledge
and say, 'OK, this is what I'm doing now.’’