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00:00What's your best piece of advice you give to, I know you do this with a lot of
00:04younger actresses. Yeah, well it depends. I guess it depends what issues people
00:08are coming in with. It's a different era now for young actors. They have, you know,
00:13they have these long lenses they didn't have on cameras and stuff. People out in
00:17the world with their iPhones that they didn't have when I was young, so we were
00:20able to do all sorts of silly things without anybody noticing. I think that's
00:23tough. I guess cherish your home life, your private life as much as possible
00:30and guard it with your life in some ways. And then try to sit down because all
00:36that standing is gonna ruin your legs and your back, I guess. Yeah, those are
00:40those are two big ones. And I guess not worry so much. Yeah. That's a
00:44tough one for people to take in, I think. And maybe there are, maybe there's little
00:50little ways of helping people relax, like, you know, meditate or something. But
00:58mostly when I say, please relax, everybody's not able to do that one.
02:19Welcome to the actor's side today. Well, she hardly needs any introduction.
02:29Winner of two Oscars, five nominations, three Baptists, three Golden Globes, an
02:34honorary Palme d'Or, and I could go on and on and on. I looked up all your
02:38awards on IMDB. It goes on for ages. It's pretty remarkable. This is Jodie Foster.
02:44Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. What do you think of all that when you see all the
02:48accolades you have gotten in this career? You know, I never thought about it
02:54when I was young. I was just going. I was just going and going and going and moving
02:57forward. And then you do get to a moment where you start looking in the past and you think,
03:00wow, yeah, that's a lot of mileage, I guess. It just seems like years and
03:05decades. Yeah. A lot of decades. Well, it's been six decades, 60 years next year. Yeah.
03:11Since your first gig. That's right. Coppertone. I was the Coppertone girl.
03:16That's true. Does it feel like that or did it just move by or do you know? Well,
03:22it just it feels like different people. I think there were different people that did
03:25different things. The first part of my career is pretty much my whole childhood.
03:29So that's just about, you know, memories of being on movie sets and being with my
03:33mom and traveling around the country and doing this. I don't ever remember not
03:39doing acting, so I don't remember that. And then there's, you know, subsequent
03:45years. I think this is the most exciting decade for sure. The 60s being 60. I think
03:50it is. I think it is. Weirdly, I think there's a kind of contentedness and the
03:56kind of work that I get to do without anxiety. There isn't a lot of anxiety. I
04:01think I've accomplished a whole bunch of my little bucket list things and I can
04:06just like throw that out. And now it's really a lot of fun being part of a team
04:10and supporting people whose voices haven't been heard up until now and
04:15contributing whatever, I guess, wisdom or, you know, experience that I might have
04:20and still getting a good night's sleep, you know? Does being on a set, movies, phase
04:25you at all now? Are you relaxed? Is that your environment in a lot of ways? It is
04:30my environment. I think it's the place I'm the most comfortable in some ways.
04:33But I always have that healthy little bit of like, is this gonna be good? I want
04:39this to be good. I think you're, I've learned that I really need to be
04:44committed and a little unsure. And the insecurity in some ways kind of is sort
04:49of helpful because it means that I care. But there's something about the
04:54cameras and, you know, sound people and the lights and all of that that makes me
04:59feel safe. Makes me feel like I'm among people that love me and I can be free
05:04because we're all moving towards the same goal. Everybody wants the movie to
05:08be good. Yeah, exactly. I looked up, I loved looking up list of movies and
05:13came in what order, and I noticed 1976. Okay. Wow. It was like, you were like
05:20working clearly non-stop, but it was like four movies. Taxi Driver with Scorsese,
05:25which got you your first Oscar nomination. Bugsy Malone, one of the
05:30all-time great movies in my opinion. I love it, working with Alan Parker.
05:34The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. And a movie that's lived on in so many
05:40ways, Freaky Friday. Yeah, well it's interesting. Well, some, you know, Scorsese
05:45took a long time to edit then, so actually his was much earlier than the
05:49other ones. And yeah, and there was another movie I did that year called
05:54Echoes of a Summer, which didn't, wasn't a big hit, but was memorable for me. So all
05:59of that same time period. I guess that's why somebody was asking, like, what do you
06:04do, what do you do summer vacations? And I was like, ooh, I always worked on summer
06:08vacation. Somehow I didn't have vacations. That's what I did, is I just worked and
06:12that took me to, you know, Kansas and Ohio and Georgia and all sorts of places
06:19around the world. It's a bit of a blur, but I loved it. I loved kind of being
06:25a gypsy. Your career was very smartly managed by your mother. Initially, yeah. I
06:30think, because she said, I don't want her to be a typical child star who just
06:34flames out at a certain age. So she let you do movies like Taxi Driver, where, you
06:40know, and things like that, too. Yeah. Put you in the adult sphere, too, a little bit.
06:45Well, I have to be honest, I don't think that I really was picking my roles, I
06:48think, not at eight, seven or eight. I mean, I think that she was a great movie
06:54buff. She loved foreign films and she had ideas for me, maybe a vicarious thrill
06:58that she wanted me to be respected. She wanted me to have a career that had a
07:01lot of longevity and that, where I was taken seriously, and maybe because she
07:06wasn't or because she came from kind of a pre-feminist era. So there was a lot of
07:12like, this child will, you know, she will be able to do the things that I wasn't
07:17able to do, and that really, I really benefited from that. But it meant that
07:21her tastes guided the films that I did. She was a big fan of Scorsese. We had
07:26seen Mean Streets many times together, and that was what we did. I came
07:30home from school and she took me to a movie, so, especially foreign films, she
07:34was interested in. Yeah, and you, you know, so you then became a director at a
07:39certain point, too. Were you always sort of fascinated by what was going on
07:43while you were in front of the camera? Always was. I think maybe more interested
07:47in that than the acting. I like to know, because I loved films, I wanted to know
07:50how they were made and how they were put together and what were the, what were
07:53everybody's jobs. And maybe because I didn't really understand the craft of
07:58acting at all as a young person, I think I didn't really, I just thought people
08:03were telling me to be, act natural. That's what they would say. They'd be like, act
08:07naturally, act naturally. So until I did Taxi Driver, I think I didn't really
08:12understand what it was to build a character, because nobody had had faith
08:16that I would understand that, and their only directions for me were just be
08:20yourself. And then, yeah, so I was very busy looking at other things besides the
08:26acting, because the acting didn't seem that challenging. Yeah, you know. You quit
08:31for a while, you went to Yale, you did. Yeah, I did. I directed a short when I was
08:36maybe 14 or 15, and then I thought this career thing would be over by the time I
08:44was 20. I figured it would be over, 18. That's what I was told. And then I thought,
08:50well, as long as it's, I'm gonna give it one more try, because it's something that
08:54I love, but otherwise I'm gonna do this grad school thing and possibly write or
09:00possibly be a professor. Those, that's what I thought I would do. And the acting
09:05kind of took over. I still knew that I wanted to direct. I knew that that was
09:09something that I always wanted to do. So yeah, I guess I kind of fell into it. And
09:12then The Accused comes along, and then right after that, Silence of the Lambs,
09:17and you're in a whole different league. Yeah, those were the bigger movies. I mean,
09:22both Oscar nominations for those two films. Two Oscars wins. Yeah, two Oscar wins. That's right.
09:28Gotta check that math. Yeah, big moments. And I think my mom, once again, my mom was
09:36smart enough to say, use this, these wonderful honors in order to get what
09:41you want. And what I really wanted to do was direct. So after The Accused, I was
09:46able to make a deal with Orion. I found a project that I wanted to direct. I
09:49brought it to Orion, and I said, if I act in it, will you let me direct? They said,
09:53yes. We got it financed, and I did Little Man Tate that same year, right after
09:57Silence. Terrific film. Great film directorial debut, too. Thank you. Really good script.
10:02Was it Scott? Scott Frank. Frank, right? Yeah, my good buddy, who went on to be an
10:06extraordinary director, producer, you know, showrunner, everything. Amazing. So
10:14Silence of the Lambs has been compared a little bit to True Detective
10:18Another Country. Have you seen that? People say, wait a minute, there is some of
10:23Silence of the Lambs. Did you realize that when you first saw the script? I had an
10:27inkling. I thought, I felt like they lived in the same genre in some ways, and
10:30that there was inspiration there. But I, as Issa Lopez, the showrunner, writer,
10:35director of all the episodes, has said, the original True Detective, the season
10:41one, Matthew McConaughey, with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, Nick
10:44Pizzolatto producing, really took a lot of inspiration from Seven and from
10:53Silence of the Lambs. So, Silence of the Lambs, then came Seven, Fincher took
10:56inspiration from Silence of the Lambs, then came True Detective One, and then
11:00hopefully, you know, we are the next incarnation. So it's all, there's some
11:04symmetry there. Yeah, but I think broadly, it's a mythic, it has
11:11mythology as its foundation. So, you know, I think that's the strongest reason why
11:19they all kind of follow that same path, you know, that there's this, that there's
11:22somebody out there that we're trying to find, and then we have to look through
11:26our own psychology, our own tortured psychology, in order to have, find the
11:31clues that we need as detectives. You worked with Fincher, obviously. I did.
11:34Panic Realm, before he did Seven. So was that... After he did Seven, but yes. You've
11:41done so many movies with so many iconic directors and great directors. He's an
11:46interesting one, isn't he? I learn more from David Fincher than anybody I've
11:49ever worked with in my life. I've never met anybody that knows filmmaking more
11:53than him, and he can do any job on any set, including props, acting, he can do it
11:59all. So he's the most prepared director I've ever worked with, and sometimes, you
12:04know, I would say maybe, maybe, maybe that gets in the way, who knows, you know,
12:10because he's so prepared. His films have a very specific style, his television
12:14has such a specific style, you know, he was the exec producer on House of Cards
12:17and Man Hunter. And you directed one of those. I did. I'm very lucky to direct one of
12:22those, and, and there's nothing like working with somebody that has such a
12:28clear picture for where, for where it's headed. That's interesting. Does he take a
12:32lot of takes? Yes, he does, but, you know, in fairness, on Panic Room, for everything
12:38that, that, that Kristen Stewart and myself, well, the, the scenes that we were
12:42in, I think we did the least amount of takes. So he was, he was nicer to us. He
12:46tortured us a lot less than the guys. The guys had to do hundreds of takes all the
12:51time. Well, now with Issa, who is your director on True Detective. Yes. She's
12:56like the first English-language thing. She's a Mexican director. Yes. And she
13:00never worked in the U.S. I know before. So is that a roll of the dice for you as
13:05an actor to say, okay, I'm putting myself in your hands here, or? You know, I've
13:10worked with a lot of first-time directors, and I have, I had gotten to the
13:14place where I said, that's it. I'm not working with any more first-time directors.
13:17And then I keep getting kind of like, you know, weaseled back into it, because it's
13:22always a little bit of a roll of the dice. But the second that I met Issa, I
13:25knew that she was the right vision for the film, and that she had, that she had a
13:31really clear picture of where she was going. And I think she might be my
13:35favorite director I've ever worked with. Wow. Just personally, of course, because
13:39she's a lot of fun. Yeah. And I really enjoy having dinner with her. But also, I
13:44think she really is, has a tremendous balance between knowing where she's
13:49going, but also have giving you freedom. So she's playful, and she's experimental,
13:54and can be quite emotionally, emotionally understanding the characters, and yet has
14:00a clear plan, a clear objective, really understands her technology. So, so it's
14:06kind of a great combination of two things. With the exception of Fiona, it's
14:10mostly a younger cast. Yes. I don't want to say inexperience, or experience in
14:16life, and that's a great thing for acting. Right. But I think that might be
14:20challenging, too, to work with actors who have never really done much. Yeah, and fun,
14:25and a lot of fun. And, you know, it is fun to be able to contribute what you
14:31contribute. And for me, that's really whatever wisdom I have about not
14:35worrying about it. You know, I'd come into the set, and, you know, Finn Bennett, for
14:39example, who's wonderful in the film, plays Prior, my protégé, he would do a
14:43little bit of worrying. It was a lot of worrying going on with Finn. And in
14:47fairness, he's British, and he's, you would never know that he was British, and he's,
14:51you know, his American accent is flawless, and he did a lot of worrying, and I had
14:57to, like, stop him, and just be like, stop worrying. It's all going to be fine. Stop running your
15:01lines. We're not running your lines anymore. You know, I think that's my one
15:05contribution, really. Is it? Do you have a process, this is called the actor side, so
15:09we like to talk about acting. Okay. I do. I'm always interested in actors and
15:14things, and do you have a certain process or things you go on the set and say, I
15:18hope they don't try to railroad me here? Sure. I'm sure there's things you hate, you don't like.
15:24You know, you don't like to be directed a certain way, for example, but I don't like
15:29things to be too precious, because I find that makes me nervous. So the second
15:33there's a lot of fear injected into it, or if the director starts getting too
15:38earnest or too precious about things, tries to get in your head, and tries to
15:43go there with you, that is, for me, is like a chill. A chill comes on in a room. I like it
15:50to be light. I like the director, in some ways, to have an intellectual process
15:55with me, to explain things to me, and then let me do what I do. Yeah. So I don't want
15:59them to do the acting. I like to do the acting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just like to
16:04not worry so much. Yeah, and I like to be told everything, in terms of the
16:08mechanics and the technicianship and stuff like that. Conversely, you as a
16:13director directing actors, do you find you are what they call an actor's director?
16:17I think I am not. Strangely and sadly for me, I don't think I'm an actor's
16:22director, and I only learned that over time, because I don't really have any
16:26training, and sometimes I don't know how actors do it. I often look at the
16:31performances, and I just think, oh, that's amazing. I could never do that. How did
16:34they do that? So I really trust the actors to bring their ideas to the table,
16:40and what I can do for them is to be incredibly well prepared and be flexible,
16:46so that I know I've got it on film in the first and second take, so that they
16:51can be spontaneous and go fast, because I don't like to wear people down. It's
16:56instinctual with you, I can tell. You say you don't have any training? You have
17:00an acting coach you ever work with? Nope. Nothing? No. It's amazing. No, but you
17:05know, you come up with your own ways of doing things, you know, in the same way.
17:08You also learn to respect other people's processes, so some people, they need a
17:13certain environment in order to be confident, and in order to not worry, and
17:21so I've learned to, like, keep my mess out of there, right? Stop cracking jokes,
17:26and if I want to crack a joke, go over there, or just to try to honor their
17:31environment. That's so cool, because playing somebody like Liz Danvers, it's a
17:37very complex character. She's got all kinds of things going on. She's slept
17:42with every guy in town. Yeah, that's right. It's, like, so, I would say, getting
17:48that in psyche can't be that easy. How did you do it? Do you have to have some
17:54empathy or some sort of thing? Oh, of course, of course. I mean, I don't know
17:59that there is a character I don't empathize with. I mean, I think you do,
18:02even the bad guys. I think you have to understand their motivations, and that's
18:08part of the beauty of the process, especially as a director, where each one
18:11of the characters is a part of you, and you have to know why he would wear red
18:16tennis shoes. You know, why would the killer wear red tennis shoes, or, you
18:19know, what part of his past does that address, and I love that psychology work.
18:25That being said, a lot of it is instinctual, and, you know, very rarely I
18:31will, you know, I'll look at the script and say, this works or this doesn't work
18:34for me. I can always have reasons why it doesn't work for me, you know, this
18:38choice doesn't work for me, but sometimes I just have to say, that one doesn't
18:43move me, so I'm the one that's got to play it, and occasionally I just have to
18:48go, can't say it, doesn't move me, and I really get that when an actor does that
18:53with me. When an actor comes into the room and says, I can't find my way in,
18:58then I'm like, great, we're going to find a different way, and that process of
19:02being flexible sometimes is not easy for writer-directors, for example, because
19:07they spend a lot of time in their hotel rooms by themselves, and they're not used
19:10to sharing. Yeah, right, and fiddling with it. Exactly, with other people in the
19:16room, you know, every person that breathes on the script, every person that breathes
19:20in that room of 170 crew members, influences what ends up on screen, and
19:26you have to love that. I think you have to really love that, even if you tried
19:30for it to be this pure thing that came only from you, that's never going to work.
19:34Do you do improvisation in a lot of your movies? You know, I don't, because I'm a
19:39terrible improviser. I really love the words, and I like getting the words right
19:43ahead of time, and making those changes, but sometimes people throw things at me,
19:47and I just have to go there. There are people who are really gifted with improv,
19:52my son is one of them, and when I see him do it, I'm just like, I don't know, I don't
19:57know how they do it, but it's like a chemical goes off, and panic and anxiety
20:03in them breeds creativity, and it like, one part of their brain goes away, and then
20:11they're able to have this free brain. For me, opposite. That's interesting. I just
20:14suddenly go, uh, so it's not my forte. Is your son following you into this
20:21business? Did I just get a sense that... I have one. We've got another one
20:26coming up. Yes, yes. We have one actor who's decidedly more funny than me, so he
20:30really likes comedy and wit, very witty, and that's his path. And since you
20:35started at such a young age, have you been encouraging him to do it, knowing
20:38everything you know about this business? Yeah, I mean, he didn't really want to tell me
20:41until at least in the middle of high school, and then, you know, who knows where
20:48he'll end up in the business. I know he loves films. I know he loves television.
20:51He loves writing and all of that, so all of this is really just about growing up
20:56and learning about yourself, so I'm definitely encouraging him. That's wild.
21:00Before we go, I have to ask you about this scene that you did. Okay. I wrote
21:05down some of the scenes that I watched in there. Okay. First of all, you're in a
21:08bunch of ice caves. Yes. And the stuff that's coming out, was it really that
21:13cold there? No. Not the ice caves. The ice caves were all manufactured on a sound
21:21stage because we couldn't, it would not be safe, and there was no way to get
21:26cameras or lights or be able to attach equipment in a real ice cave. That
21:30wouldn't be possible. That's you. You identified probably the only thing that
21:34was not real. I was just wondering because it's very good acting. Thank you. Yeah,
21:40Kaylee and I did some cold acting. We did some cold acting. Because this is the
21:44coldest. It's all dark all the time. Yeah, but we spent so much time outside in the
21:49middle of the night below zero conditions that we had some good sense
21:52memory about what it was to be cold. So, you know, we could be like, ah, remember
21:57in, you know, February when we were up in Akureyri and you said you couldn't feel
22:02any part of your body? Like, let's just remember that. What about when you fall
22:07into the sea? Yes. Okay. That was, that looked dangerous. And you're doing your
22:12own stunts there, right? Ah, yeah. Well, yeah. That was a tank though because
22:18obviously we would not be able to do sub-zero conditions on ice. But that was
22:24probably the scariest thing I did on the show, for sure. Mostly because it was
22:28entirely in the dark. And I wear glasses. I wear really thick glasses. And I
22:33couldn't have contact lenses. And they weighted me because they didn't want me
22:38to float up. So I had to sink. So there was no way that I actually, and it was
22:41quite low. It was probably, I don't know, maybe 50 feet or 60 feet. So there was no
22:47way that I could get to the top. And even if I got to the top, because I couldn't
22:50see, there was no way I could find the one hole where everything else was
22:54plastic. So they had to, when they said cut, they had to have a guy come, swim
22:59really fast, and then bring me up to the surface. Because you can't see anything.
23:03No. Wow. I couldn't see anything. It's so, such a great shot. This director has done some
23:10stunning work on this. Yes. And Florian Hoffmeister, our DP, extraordinary,
23:16extraordinary DP. Not easy to shoot at night in those conditions. And he made a
23:22spectacularly looking tonal film. So where does this stand in your career?
23:27It's such an interesting project. It's about so many things. It's about racism
23:32in many ways. It's about male egos out of control and doing things, which I think
23:37is happening in around the world of male leaders right now who have a certain
23:42thing. On and on with the things of the indigenous community. Of course, you have a
23:46wonderful co-star and partner in Yes, Kaylee Reese. What is it about what this
23:53show says that attracts you and that you want people to see? You know, I don't know
23:57if it's just because it's the last thing that I did, but in some ways, you know,
23:59the last thing is always the best thing that you've ever done, and probably one
24:02of the best experiences I've ever had. And I'm so proud of it because I'm kind
24:08of in awe of the storytelling. I'm so moved by how deep it goes, and there's so
24:15much to say about it, and it's a place that we've never seen before, that we
24:18didn't know before. And there's a pollution and everything we're doing to
24:22it. Yeah, and there's even an acknowledgment, and I won't tell you how
24:26because it's the denouement of the show, but there's an acknowledgment about how
24:30blind we are as viewers. How we never saw it coming, that we never noticed that
24:37the truth was invisible to us because we don't think much of it.
24:42To me, I think that was a really important message, and me as the
24:47racist Karen in the show, I thought was, you know, was always on my mind. Like, how
24:52are we gonna create a first-person, Native perspective, and really
25:01have the audience understand that they've been blind, you know? Exactly, and
25:07even with her daughter, the way she treats her. Yes, yes. All about fear, you
25:13know? Motherhood. I understood that character. I understand my
25:16character. I don't have to love her all the time. She's very unlovable a lot of
25:20the time, but I really understood that, that so much of what propels her is fear.
25:27You know, the same way my mom had fears for me. You know, she was scared that I
25:31wouldn't be able to take care of myself, that I would be left alone, and
25:35then I would, you know, that if I, I don't know, you know, these fears that we
25:40hold on to from childhood, and I think that's true of Liz as well. Well, your
25:44mother should know. Yeah, wherever she is. You've done okay. Jodie Foster has done
25:52okay. True Detective Night Country is on HBO and HBO Max, or they call it Max, now
26:00anytime, and a lot of Emmy buzz. Thank you so much for coming out and talking to us
26:05today on the actor's side, Jodie Foster. Cheers. Thanks.