Jodie Foster Quotes
Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.
On her role in
Taxi Driver, when she was 13: "I spent four hours with a shrink trying to prove I was normal enough to play a hooker. Does that make sense?"
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable.
It's not my personality to be extroverted emotionally, so acting has been helpful to me.
I could tell you the criticism backward and forward about
Little Man Tate. But it didn't bother me as long as they were talking about the work and not about 'she has fat thighs' or something. But I fared really well with 'Tate,' so I shouldn't be complaining.
"Kids talk like sailors now. Adults don't want to know." -- at age 14.
On the advantages of being an actress who is months from turning 40: "They've lived longer, they're more confident about their choices and they don't have to be hip and cool anymore, which I think is a godsend - you make really bad choices when you are trying to be hip." -- April 2004
If I fail, at least I will have failed my way.
On "Foster Child", her brother
Buddy Foster's unauthorized biography about her: "A cheap cry for attention and money filled with hazy recollections, fantasies and borrowed press releases. Buddy has done nothing but break our mother's heart his whole life."
On devoting more time to parenting her sons than film work: "There's something so pure about the ways boys love you."
I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.
Acting, for me, is exhausting. I'm always more energized by directing. It's more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It's a huge passion for me.
I love to see theater but not to work in it. Too messy, and I have a bit of an inferiority complex.
What I didn't realize is how completely consumed I would be by my sons. I didn't know that the rest of my life would become so little a priority.
I'm nervous every day on a film set. The anxiety of performance is not like anything else because you never know if you'll get there or not. There is an anxiety when it comes to finding the truth.
"I'm lucky that people do leave me alone. I'm not
Madonna. The red carpet is work for me. I work from 9-to-5 and when I get home, I don't want to go back to work by going to an industry event. For me, putting on makeup and a fancy dress is work".
I've learned something in the last few years that I really didn't know about myself as an actor. I basically learned how to stay happy. It's important for me to be happy working or I feel resentful. I don't like it. I hate myself. What I know now is that I really need to love the director. I need him to be a good parent. And then I will lie down on the train tracks for him and go to the ends of the earth for him.
Motherhood doesn't mean I don't have a creative side that I need to nourish. It doesn't mean I don't have independence from them. I'd be a crazy person if I didn't.
As time goes on, I will play characters who get older: I don't want to be some Botoxed weirdo.
On her role as the child prostitute Iris in
Taxi Driver: "At first I didn't want to do the part, but only because I was afraid my friends would tease me afterwards. I thought, wow, they've got to be kidding. It was a great part for a 21-year old, but I couldn't believe that they were offering it to me. I was the Disney kid."
On her role as the child prostitute Iris in
Taxi Driver: "I spent four hours with a shrink to prove that I was normal enough to play a hooker. It was the role that changed my life. For the first time I played something completely different. But I knew the character I had to play - I grew up three blocks away from Hollywood Boulevard and saw prostitutes like Iris every day."
On the making of
Taxi Driver: "There was a welfare worker on the set every day and she saw the daily rushes of all my scenes and made sure I wasn't on set when Robert De Niro said a dirty word."
On the making of
Taxi Driver: "You rarely have a director like
Martin Scorsese or a co-star like
Robert De Niro, who rehearses and rehearses until you get the feeling that for the time you're with him he is the character. It's so real it's frightening."
On
Taxi Driver: "I think it's one of the finest films that's ever been made in America. It's a statement about America. About violence. About loneliness. Anonymity. Some of the best works are those that have tried to imitate that kind of film, that kind of style. It's just a classic. I felt when I came home every day that I had really accomplished something."
On backing
Mel Gibson after his 2006 anti-Semitic comments to a cop while drunk: Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not. But, it's no secret that he has always fought a terrible battle with alcoholism. [Mel] was a shining example of how low you can go when you are young and still pull yourself up. He took his recovery very seriously, which is why I know he is strong enough to get through this now.
[Criticizing the film adaptation of
Sin City]: That was so painfully cartoonish I was offended. I don't know how you enjoy or laugh about a child abduction and molestation. What part of that sentence is funny? I can't get beyond that. I don't know if everyone understands the impact of that movie's message.
