TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Jodie Foster has been in the public eye since she was 3 years old as a Coppertone girl on TV commercials. At 12, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a child sex worker in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film "Taxi Driver." Foster has had an illustrious career as an actor and director, winning two Academy Awards for her roles in "The Accused" and "Silence Of The Lambs." Terry spoke with Foster in 2002 and asked her about taking on challenging roles from a young age.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
When you were 12 1/2 and got the part in "Taxi Driver," was your mother afraid of what you'd be exposed to playing a child prostitute?
JODIE FOSTER: Well, you know, first of all, I had been an actor since I was 3 years old, so I had a long body of experience. And my mom really took me to all sorts of movies and took me to R-rated movies whenever she could. And, you know, we talked a lot about politics and we talked about deeper things. And I grew up in Hollywood, so I was exposed to it all over the place. I knew the work of Martin Scorsese and knew what an artist he was and had seen "Mean Streets" and had also done "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" with him, so I don't really think it was that big of a consideration.
It was a consideration, for example, for the Board of Education. And at that time, you know, they really wanted to know that I would not be emotionally damaged by playing this part. So they brought in a - or actually my lawyers brought in psychologists to decide, I suppose, decipher - after an hour of meeting me to decipher whether I would be, you know, entirely damaged by my atmosphere.
GROSS: Well, how the heck did they figure that out?
FOSTER: (Laughter) You know, I really don't know.
GROSS: I mean, what did they do to test your psychological health?
FOSTER: They asked me a lot of questions like, do you like Chinese food? You know, things like that. I have a very fond memory of my therapy session at 12. And it really was pretty boring.
GROSS: Let me just play a scene from this film.
FOSTER: OK.
GROSS: In this film, you know, Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, wants to rescue you from a life of prostitution. He's just kind of taken you as a cause. You know, you're a 12 1/2-year-old kid or a 13-year-old kid who's being sold by a pimp, played by Harvey Keitel. And so De Niro goes to Keitel and buys some time with you, not to have sex with you, but to convince you to let him rescue you from this life. So here you are in a room together for the first time. He wants to change your life. You want to give him his money's worth because he just bought some time with you. Let's hear an excerpt of that scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TAXI DRIVER")
ROBERT DE NIRO: (As Travis) What's your name?
FOSTER: (As Iris) Easy.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) Well, that's not any kind of name.
FOSTER: (As Iris) Oh, it's easy to remember.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) Yeah, but what's your real name?
FOSTER: (As Iris) I don't like my real name.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) Well, what's your real name?
FOSTER: (As Iris) Iris.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) Well, what's wrong with that? That's a nice name.
FOSTER: (As Iris) That's what you think.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't you remember me? I mean, remember when you got into a taxi? It was a checkered taxi. You got in, and that guy Matthew came by and he said he wanted to take you away, he pulled you away?
FOSTER: (As Iris) I don't remember that.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) You don't remember any of that?
FOSTER: (As Iris) No.
DE NIRO: (As Travis) Well, that's all right. I'm going to get you out of here.
GROSS: "Taxi Driver" is such an extraordinary movie. I mean, it's at the top of, or near the top of...
FOSTER: Right.
GROSS: ...So many people's lists. And so many of us have seen it, you know, over and over again. I'm thinking, you know, at the age of 12 1/2, to work with Scorsese and De Niro...
FOSTER: Yeah.
GROSS: ...And Keitel, you know, gee (laughter).
FOSTER: It really changed my life. At that time, I had really - I had made many more movies than either one of them had.
GROSS: Oh, God, that's so amazing.
FOSTER: Yeah (laughter). But I had played mostly - you know, people used to ask of me, you know, act naturally. Be yourself. Say that line just as you would say that line. And it just never occurred to me that being an actor was ever going to be some kind of a satisfying career because it just seemed dumb to me. You just, you know, read the lines someone else wrote. And there wasn't a lot of thought into it, and there was no building of a character. And it really wasn't until I met Robert De Niro and he kind of took me under his wing and sat down with me for hours at a time that I really understood that there was more to acting than just being a puppet.
GROSS: If you remember, I'd love to hear some of the things he told you in those talks about acting.
FOSTER: Well, I wish that he had had some kind of, you know, wonderful, miraculous things to say. But mostly he would take me to these little divey coffee shops in different parts of town, sometimes in Spanish Harlem and, you know, different parts of town that he found. And he didn't talk to me much. He just let me sit there. And after a while, I realized that this was his - you know, he was going to do this again, you know, for another hour. So I just looked around, and I'd talk with other people and I'd go on my merry way and, you know, read the newspaper occasionally.
And after a while he might bring in the script and we'd start working on the script. And he'd do the lines over and over and over again. And having been a child actor, of course, I knew my lines. So now I was really bored because I'd have to do these lines over and over again with this adult. And then by the end of our meetings, he would throw improvisation in. And that was, I think, a really good lesson, because I suddenly learned that improvisation was about knowing the text so well that you could deviate from it in a meaningful way, as if you had been living this conversation, and always find your way back to the text. And I think that's a lesson that most young actors don't really get.
GROSS: My guest is Jodie Foster.
I'm almost shocked that the Disney productions, that Disney studio, cast you in "Freaky Friday" - even though you had much more of a history with children's movies - after "Taxi Driver." I can't believe (laughter)...
FOSTER: I'm so happy that they did.
GROSS: ...That they wanted you in a Disney film, you know, because - yeah, go ahead.
FOSTER: And that tells you how loyal Disney was, you know, because I had made many movies for Disney before then. And it was a conscious choice by my mom. When she was ferreting out which film I would do next, she really wanted to make sure that I would go back and forth and do different kinds of movies and so that people wouldn't pigeonhole me as one type of character. And at that time, you know, "Freaky Friday" was probably the first feminist movie out there for youngsters.
GROSS: In "Freaky Friday," you're quite the tomboy. You play hockey. You're also wearing braces (laughter). Could you relate to this character? Was this character, like, foreign to you outside of movies? Because it's, like, the suburban tomboy schoolgirl, and it just seems like a life that was probably as far away as the life of Iris in "Taxi Driver."
FOSTER: Well, not really. I mean, I went to school. And I didn't wear braces, but I certainly played a lot of sports and I was kind of a tomboy. So I don't think it was as big a stretch as you might think.
GROSS: OK.
FOSTER: I mean, I think my mom really went out of the way to make sure that I could lead as normal a life as possible. Because you have to remember that I had been in the business since I was 3 years old, so that was something I had to fight for. Normalcy, feeling normal, feeling like I fit in was something I really had to fight for.
MOSLEY: We're listening to a 2002 interview with Jodie Foster. We'll be back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BERNARD HERMANN'S "SPORT AND IRIS")
MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Jodie Foster. She won an Oscar for best actress for her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling in the 1991 film "Silence Of The Lambs."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: One of your most popular films is "Silence Of The Lambs," in which you play an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer. No problems with that film in terms of the violence in it or just - I'm just wondering if it was, like, creepy for you to deal with that kind of material after the whole (CROSSTALK) affair.
FOSTER: Well, I loved "Silence Of The Lambs," and I certainly - I loved the book, and it was something that I pursued actively. Because I did feel that the perspective in the movie, the point of view of the film was from the point of view of a young person who believed that her destiny was to save people. And that's - that is the point of view of the camera of that movie. A very different point of view than, of course, the being the cannibal or the serial killer himself and looking at the world around him with those eyes on. I think "Silence" is a wonderful film, and I really felt like it needed to be made.
And there was a part of me that felt - that was terribly drawn to it. I had played a lot of victims in my life, and, you know, if you asked me at the time why I was playing victims, I would have said, well, you're crazy. What do you even talking about? I don't play victims. But when you look back on my work, you see a pattern. You see an unconscious pattern. "Silence Of The Lambs," in some ways, was the end of that pattern. Because it was the first time that I played somebody whose destiny was to save them - something that she knew as a small girl, something that she knew before she was born. There was a part of her that was drawn and who's destined to find those marginalized women out there, or those women who were too fat, too thin, too small, too quiet, and to be their saviors.
GROSS: Let me play a short scene from "Silence Of The Lambs," and you play an FBI agent who's searching for - trying to track down a serial killer. And as part of your search, you go visit Hannibal Lecter, who is the serial killer who killed and ate his victims. You're visiting him in prison, where he's serving life. And you think he'll have clues about this serial killer you're trying to track down. Hannibal Lecter is played by Anthony Hopkins. This is your first meeting with him, in which you're trying to get information from him. And he's both testing you and playing with you at the same time.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS")
ANTHONY HOPKINS: (As Dr. Hannibal Lecter) Tell me - what did Miggs say to you, Multiple Miggs in the next cell? He hissed at you. What did he say?
FOSTER: (As Clarice Starling) He said, I can smell your [expletive].
HOPKINS: (As Dr. Hannibal Lecter) I see. I myself cannot. (Sniffing). You use Evyan skin cream. And, sometimes, you wear L'Air du Temps. But not today.
FOSTER: (As Clarice Starling) Did you do all these drawings, doctor?
HOPKINS: (As Dr. Hannibal Lecter) Ah. That is the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere. Do you know Florence?
FOSTER: (As Clarice Starling) All that detail just from memory, sir?
HOPKINS: (As Dr. Hannibal Lecter) Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view.
FOSTER: (As Clarice Starling) Well, perhaps you'd care to lend us your view on this questionnaire, sir?
HOPKINS: (As Dr. Hannibal Lecter) Oh, no, no, no, no. You were doing fine. You had been courteous and receptive to courtesy. You had established trust with the embarrassing truth about Miggs. And now this ham-handed segue into your questionnaire. (Clicking tongue). It won't do.
FOSTER: (As Clarice Starling) I'm only asking you to look at this, doctor. Either you will, or you won't.
GROSS: Jodie Foster, can you talk a little bit about working opposite Anthony Hopkins in these scenes with him?
FOSTER: I was kind of scared to death of him. The only time that I'd met him was at a rehearsal. And we'd started, you know, rehearsing right away. And, you know, he brought that voice out, and I kind of got scared of him. And for some reason, during the shooting, we were always behind glass. You know, he was either behind glass, or I was behind glass. So we never really got to hang out together at all. And I was kind of scared of him the whole movie. And then one day, over tuna fish sandwiches at the end of the film, I admitted it to him. And finally, he admitted to me, I was kind of scared of you, too. And it was sort of a very funny moment. And from then on, I think we've become much more comfortable with each other.
GROSS: Why was he scared of you?
FOSTER: I guess it was just probably the intensity of our characters playing opposite each other. You know, the - that dialogue in "Silence Of The Lambs" is something that you could do in a play for the rest of your life. It's so rich and so intimate, and yet there's so much gamesmanship behind it, as well. It's very rich stuff. And when you literally almost never see your partner except behind glass, it just creates this very strange atmosphere on set.
GROSS: Now, you're using a Southern accent. I'm not sure exactly which state it's supposed to be from.
FOSTER: She's originally from West Virginia but had been transplanted to Montana so has lost her accent slightly.
GROSS: So why was it felt that an accent was needed for the role.
FOSTER: That was a choice of the director. It was also very much a big part of the novel. She's somebody who is from the South and is not from the tony family that others in the FBI have come from. She has had to work hard her whole life to be anything more than ordinary. And she was, you know, orphaned at a young age and gone - was thrust into living with people that didn't really want her. So it creates a character for Clarice who's somebody who is very much like a lot of these victims that the killer has been killing. That's her background. She's a nobody from nowhere. And the accent, I think, is very important. It's - it also - it's a fuel to Hannibal Lecter because he can glean parts of her past through her voice, things that she'd love to cover up. It's her weakness.
GROSS: Any thoughts about your own voice? Is that something that you worked on at all or that directors worked on with you, or did it just kind of develop on its own?
FOSTER: No. Nobody's ever worked on my voice. A lot of people made fun of me 'cause I had a deep voice my whole life. But no. No, no one's ever worked on my voice. However, I have had a fantasy about doing radio because I'm such a big NPR head, and I listen to the radio every single day. And I think, wouldn't it be great? I could be wearing, you know, my pajamas. I could sound really important, but I'd be wearing my pajamas.
GROSS: (Laughter) That's right, unless you had to go to the studio every day, in which I don't think you'd want to be wearing your pajamas.
MOSLEY: That's Jodie Foster, recorded in 2002. She played FBI agent Clarice Starling in the 1991 film "Silence Of The Lambs." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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