Jodie Foster

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This is fresh air.

I'm Terry Gross.

My guest is Jody Foster and we're going to look back on her life and career, starting

with her early days as a child actor and her Oscar-nominated performance in Taxi Driver

when she was 12.

Next month marks the film's 50th anniversary.

She recently received an Oscar nomination for the film Nyad, an Emmy win for the latest

season of the HBO series True Detective, and is now starring in a new French language

film A Private Life.

Along the way, Foster won many awards, including Oscars for the films The Accused and The

Silence of the Lambs.

In a private life, she plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris, and with the exception

of a few lines, she speaks French throughout the film.

When the film begins, everyone is angry with her, including her patience.

One of them accuses her of having wasted his time.

He's been in therapy with her for years, hoping it would help him quit smoking.

It hasn't helped.

So we've tried a hypnotist, and after only one session, he quits cigarettes.

Foster's character is very skeptical of hypnosis, but when one of her patients, a beautiful

woman, dies under mysterious circumstances, Foster's character wants to get to the bottom

of what happened, hoping she wasn't in any way responsible.

Despite her skepticism, she sees a hypnotist, goes under, and that sets her on a path

to uncover what happened to her patient.

Jody Foster, welcome back to Fresh Air.

It's been years, and my impression is your life has changed a lot since then.

I don't know.

It's moved on, but it's the same old me, and I'm always so happy to be on NPR because

I'm such an NPR fan and such an NPR head.

That is so great to hear.

Your new film is in French, and you want to French language school, right?

Yeah.

My mom, when I was about nine years old, she had never traveled anywhere in her life, and

she, right before then, she took a trip to France and fell in love with it and said,

OK, you're going to learn French, you're going to go to an immersion school, and someday

maybe you'll be a French actor.

So they dropped me in, where it was a school, and you see if I'll say to Los Angeles,

that does everything in French, so it was science and math and history, everything in French,

and I cried for about six months, and then I spoke fluently and got over it.

So Hypnosis plays a key role in the new movie.

Did you ever go under, even for research?

Well, actually, I have.

I'd quit smoking when I quit smoking.

I went to a hypnotist, and I was a really, really big smoker, so I tried everything, and

I tried to quit a million times, and everybody I'd get edgy, or I'd gain weight, or I couldn't

sleep.

So I went to this guy and wrote the check for $90, and I don't know, he said a few things.

I felt a little sleepy, but other than that, I didn't go into any kind of trance, and

I left thinking, well, this is dumb, I can't believe I gave that guy $90, and I could smoke

tomorrow.

And I just never smoked again.

Wow.

That's great.

That's kind of what happens in the movie.

Yeah.

Well, not really.

No, the movie sets her off on this, like, mystery, it becomes kind of a detective.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people, my character, Lee Yenstein, is a 14 psychoanalyst, and

in the United States psychoanalysis and Freud, we've kind of canceled him, you know, when

we decided he's, you know, a misogynist, and, you know, nobody really wanted to follow

Freudian principles.

But what he was most famous for, of course, when he started was these case histories of

people who came in with hysterical illnesses and said, you know, my right arm won't move,

or I'm blind for no reason.

And he would say, well, let's uncover parts of your past, and that will help this physical

ailment.

And in this character's case, she goes there because she can't stop crying, not crying,

but just water just keeps coming out of her eyes, and she's really annoyed.

That's never happened to her.

She's not particularly sad.

She just water keeps coming out of her eyes.

So interestingly, she goes back to this hypnosis, rolling her eyes the whole time.

And psychoanalysis and hypnosis, they started off together with Freud and then grew part

and he denounced hypnosis.

So there's this ongoing hatred between the two that gets looked at in the film.

So just a question about your Freudian therapy.

Do you actually lie down on a couch?

In the film, my patients lie down in the couch, my doctor's patients, in my life where

now I've done therapy, absolutely not that.

But apparently, you know, this is how they do it.

And you look either out of window or at a blank wall or perhaps at a painting that they've

put you never look at the therapist, you know, there's all these rules as to how they

make it.

It's all very interesting and the people are fascinating, but it's definitely not something

I would want to do.

Would you be game to do a career retrospective?

Sure.

Oh, sure.

Okay.

I'm going to go back to the very beginning.

Okay.

You did a Capitone commercial.

A lot of people know that when you were three and it wasn't like the billboard or picture

version.

This was like a TV commercial.

Right.

Yeah.

And when we didn't see your bear behind, unlike the picture version, you know, the right photo

version.

Yeah.

There were a lot of things that were different.

It was, you know, it was the 60s and the dog would not perform.

So the dog was, you know, they tried to get the dog to kind of pull it.

My bikini bottom, but the dog was like not having it.

Okay.

I'm moving on.

This is from the Paul Lin Show, which was, I think from the early 70s.

And so the main character played by Paul Lin, rings of the doorbell, looking for his daughter

and son-in-law, who he either knows or thinks is living there.

And when he walks in, he realizes, oh, it's like a hippie Buddhist commune.

Okay.

Okay.

Here we go.

Howdy and Barbara Dickerson here.

Are you the fuzz?

No, I'm not the fuzz.

I'm not supposed to let the fuzz in.

I'm Barbara's father.

I'm not supposed to let them in, either.

Let me talk to your mother.

Which one?

Well, the girl's here with my mother.

Just what a father wants to hear.

Pardon me, young man.

But I'm looking for howdy and Barbara Dickerson.

He's meditating.

Loppa, can you hear me?

Only if you're Buddha.

Look, I'm not gonna stand here and play straight man to you.

I really, I do remember Paul Lin because I really liked him.

He's funny in that.

He was funny.

He was funny.

He was really nice to me.

And, of course, he's very memorable.

So I do remember being on that show.

Okay, I actually got one more.

Okay.

This is a Crest TV commercial.

Oh, yeah.

So four guys are playing golf.

One of them sings upon a putt.

The other guys are react.

And at the same time, you run up on the green.

Excited to tell your father about the visit to the dentist

that you and your brother just had.

Okay.

There you are, dad.

Jody?

Oh, check up.

Jimmy only had two cavities.

And I didn't have any.

Hey, we really did it.

How'd you do it?

We rushed with Crest now.

Must be the Crest.

It has four rides.

The others we tried didn't.

Hey, great.

A toothpick should fight cavities.

Crest can promise everybody results like this.

But we can promise most people good checkups.

Fighting cavities is the whole idea behind Crest.

Hey, George, maybe your game is really tennis.

Oh, boy.

The acting is so terrible.

Oh, yeah.

Well, but that was what you were supposed to do.

You were supposed to be terrible.

We didn't know.

I mean, just was a different style.

You know, it was a different style.

But by which I think you mean it sounds like somebody

reading their lines for the first time.

Yes.

Yes.

And, yeah, I mean, I remember thinking,

oh, well, this is not a job I'm going to do when I'm a grown-up

because this seems like a very silly job.

I mean, you know, I just learn lines and then I say them.

And somebody usually says to me,

the first direction somebody tells me is usually act natural.

Or maybe they'll say something like be excited on that line.

And that part of it had held no sway for me.

I had no interest in that.

The part that was interesting to me was being on set

with these families of mostly guys.

They really were all these brothers and fathers

who would teach me things.

And they'd talk about how the camera worked.

And we would all be freezing together

or complaining about the food together.

And there was this community of people that I belong to.

And because I love movies and love television,

that was such a big part of my life.

I was a part of something.

So that's the part that I remember.

I don't remember the work particularly as being intriguing.

Well, your mother was behind you doing all of this.

And since you didn't find it acting very intriguing,

and also because you became like the primary breadwinner.

Breadwinner, yeah.

Did you feel like you were being forced to do it?

No, I think that it was more complicated than that.

There were moments where, for example,

I'd rebel because I didn't want to take my makeup off.

Something I hated doing as a kid.

I hated taking my makeup off.

And at the time we wore that kind of like orange pancake

all over your face.

And I would lie.

So she'd say, did you take your makeup off?

And I would say yes.

And of course, I hadn't.

It was all over me.

It was all over my white shirt.

And then she would say to me, you know,

you can quit anytime.

You can always stop.

You can say, I don't want to do this.

And I sort of begrudgingly, it was like, OK,

I'll go take my makeup off.

I knew that it was more of a complicated threat than it was a choice.

So yeah, I mean, it was work.

It was real work.

And I loved the part of that that got me respect.

That gave me community.

That made me part of a big family.

And then there were parts of it that I didn't like so much.

So you supported the family for a while.

Did that put a lot of pressure on you?

I think my mom was very aware that that was unusual

and that would put pressure on me.

So she kind of sold it differently.

She would say, well, you do one job.

But then your sister does another job.

And we all participate.

We're all doing a job.

And this is all part of the family.

And I think that was her way of making my brothers and sisters

not feel like somehow they were beholden to me

or to my brother who also was an actor.

And not having pressure on me.

But also helping her ego a bit.

Because I think that was hard for her to feel

that she was being taken care of by a child.

Well, it is unusual.

Yes, unusual.

And there's two things that can happen as a child actor.

One is you develop resilience.

And you come up with a plan and a way to survive intact.

And there are real advantages to that in life.

And I really feel grateful for the advantages

that that's given me, the benefits that that's given me.

Or the other is you totally fall apart.

And you can't take it.

And you really have psychological problems when you get older.

And maybe drug problems, too, because it's so...

I mean, I've not experienced it, but it seems to be very challenging

to survive that as desirable as it might be to outsiders.

It is.

And, you know, there's lots of things you're built for

and things you're not built for.

And, you know, I always say the analogy is like

if you're an astronaut, you know, some people can do zero G

and some people just can't.

You know, some people are fine with it.

They find it freeing.

It's lovely and they feel light.

They like the solitude of being in space.

And other people are like, I'm going crazy here

and I need to see people.

And I just want to throw up all the time.

So I happen to be one of those people who was able

to find resilience and was able to use it to become...

Use the challenge in some ways to become a deeper person.

You were mulled by a lion at 89.

I read that, but what was...

What happened?

Was this on a shoot?

Yeah, it was an accident.

I was working with a lion who I loved

and but worked with every day.

It was an old lion.

Had no teeth, very old, on a Disney movie.

And they kept them in zoo structures at night,

but they hadn't put enough security on them.

At kids at night in the middle of the night

would come and shoot BB guns at the lions.

There were two other lions.

One was a stand-in lion and one was like a stunt lion.

So they let the...

Were they in the union?

Exactly.

Yeah, there's a whole animal training thing

that we do in the film business.

And so the trainer couldn't get the old lion to work.

So he just wouldn't move.

And you can't make a 500 pound lion do anything.

So they got the stand-in lion and the stand-in lion worked all day.

And we were ending the day going up a hillside.

I think they might have been tugging him

with a guiding him with a piano wire,

which is a thin filament.

And I guess he snapped.

I mean, he came around.

He picked me up by the hip and shook me.

Wow, he picked you up.

Like in his mouth?

Yeah, he held me horizontally

and then flipped me around and shook me.

So I watched the entire film crew

run in the opposite direction,

sideways.

And to get you help

or to run away from the lion.

Run away from the lion.

And then I remember...

Showing great courage.

Yes.

And then I remember thinking,

oh, this must be an earthquake.

I knew about earthquakes.

I grew up in LA.

So I knew about earthquakes.

And then I guess...

Wait, wait.

Are you saying you didn't know you were in the lion's mouth?

No.

I guess I was, you know,

it's a shocking thing that happened.

I had no idea what was happening.

The only thing I remember is I remember his main

coming around my...

When I looked down,

I could see his main coming around.

And then the next thing I knew,

it was an earthquake.

And then he dropped me in...

The trainer said,

drop it.

And the lion was so well trained that he dropped me.

And then as I was rolling down the hill,

he came running after me.

And then he put his paw on me.

Like, I got this.

What do we do next?

So yeah, it was a scary moment.

The good news is I'm fine.

I have, you know, some scars

that are very delicate and dainty

and have moved all over my body

because apparently that's what happens

when you get older.

You're scars move around your body.

And I'm not afraid of alliance.

In fact, whenever I see a lion,

I went to Africa not too long ago.

And everybody else was terrified.

They were petrified

because the lions were so close

and they were eating prey and all of this.

And I was like,

oh, man, you want to go out there

and ride on top of them.

Do you think that acting was unsafe?

No.

No.

Accidents happened.

And I think my mom was really smart.

I think she, you know, she talked to me

and she said, you know,

it wasn't the lion's fault.

And I understood that.

I went back and worked with the lion.

It was in a hospital for, you know,

three or four days or something.

They determined I was okay.

So they, I went back and I worked with the lion.

And I think that was the right thing to do,

which is, you know, I was very lucky.

And there are animals.

And we love them.

And, you know, you go through the procedures

to make sure that you're safe.

And I worked with lots of other, you know,

I worked with camels.

I worked with pigs.

I worked with lots of other animals.

I think she did the right thing,

which is just to make sure that I got through it.

That's amazing resilience.

Yeah, I guess.

You know, I guess that's a good thing

that I'm trained as a person

and as an actor

to deaden myself somehow

to some of my feelings

that might get in the way.

But when you say it out loud,

it sounds like there will be psychological ramifications

down the line, which I'm sure is true, you know?

I think there's a part of me

that has been made resilient

by what I've done for a living

and has been able to control my emotions

in order to do that in a role.

And also that leads to problems

when you're older.

You know, those survival skills get in the way.

And you have to learn how to ditch them

when you get older

and they're not serving you anymore.

I think your mother sometimes exercised

like such good judgment

in terms of choosing roles for you.

Though some people might find that judgment

very questionable when it comes to taxi driver,

but that's one of my very favorite films.

It's such a deep psychological study

of the characters in it.

Yeah, I couldn't be more grateful to have,

I mean, what luck to have been part of

that they're golden age of cinema

in the 70s, some of the great,

greatest movies that America ever made,

the greatest filmmakers,

otur films,

that were really talking about our times

and ways that challenging it

and ways that it had never happened before.

So I couldn't be happier

that she chose these roles for me.

And a lot of it was, yes,

a vicarious effort on her part

that she wanted something for me

that she couldn't achieve in her life

and what that was was respect,

meaning,

and to be a part of an art movement,

to resist being objectified,

and to make films that matter,

and that would matter to women

of the next generation.

And my mom who grew up in a pre-feminist time

just didn't have those opportunities

to be able to play a part

in the next role that women were going to play.

Did you approve of feminism

once it started really blossoming?

Oh, yes, yes.

And filled with mixed messages

like everybody of that era, you know?

It was always very confusing,

but you know, anybody who's my age

probably has the same stories

of their mom saying, you can do anything,

you can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer,

but make sure you don't ever make a man mad.

Okay, because, you know,

try to manipulate him and say nice things

about, you know, flatter him

rather than make him mad

because making a man mad is dangerous.

You know, there was just a lot of mixed messages

of, you know, you can do anything,

but you won't be able to take care of yourself,

so who are you going to marry

that's going to take care of you?

And, you know,

that's what we do as kids

is you rebel against your parents

for the things that you feel are not true to your life,

and that you feel are all fear.

They're just throwing fear at you

and you reject that

to become your own person.

So, did you ever take her advice

of always flattering men?

No, but I certainly knew

when there was a drunken guy

in a bar who, you know,

I knew to say something nice

and try to change the subject

and, you know, leave as quickly as I could.

I think like any woman

who wants to save their life

we know that, historically,

we are in danger.

Let's take a short break here

and then we'll be back.

If you're just joining us,

my guest is Jodie Foster.

Her new movie is called

A Private Life

and it opens and select theaters

January 16th and more widely

on the 30th.

I'm Terry Gross

and this is Fresh Air.

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And this is Terry Gross host of the show.

One of the things I do is

write the weekly newsletter.

And I'm a newsletter fan.

I read it every Saturday

after breakfast.

The newsletter includes all the week's

shows, staff recommendations,

and Molly picks timely highlights

from the archive.

It's a fun read.

It's also the only place

where we tell you what's coming up

next week.

So I want to focus a little on

taxi driver since next month

marks the 50th anniversary

of its release.

So let's start with a

amazing.

Yeah.

And this is an example of your mother

being brilliant in accepting

the part for you

and of being controversial

because she accepted the part for you.

Because you play

a 12-year-old

taxi driver.

And you are

what would then be called a

prostitute and today a sex worker

who has a pimped

played by a Harvey Kytel.

And Robert De Niro plays

Travis Bickle, the taxi driver,

and De Niro sees this.

And so he wants to

buy some time with you

to save you. He kind of has a

savior complex.

So here's a scene where

he has tried to talk with you

and rescue you, take him away

from the pimped.

But you don't want to be rescued.

So he ends up taking you to a

diner. He's trying to

convince you to go back home,

be with your parents,

and just live a better life.

And you speak first.

Who do you want me to go

back to my parents?

I mean, they hate me.

Why do you think I split

in there? Yeah, but you can't live

like this. It's a hell.

A girl she'll live at home.

Can you ever hear of

women's lip? What do you mean

women's lip? You sure

are younger and you should be

at home now. You should be

dressed up. You should be going out

with boys. You should be going to

school. You know, that kind of stuff.

God, are you square?

Hey, I'm not square. You're the one

that's square. You're full of

work out with those creeps and

lowlights and degenerates out

on the street and you

say you're saying a little

f****** for nothing, man.

For some lowlight pimp

stands in a hole.

I'm the, I'm square. You're the one

that's square, man.

I think Paul Schrader

doesn't ever get quite

enough credit for writing this.

I mean, people who really know

movies like think he's made

it. Scorsese did a brilliant job

directing it, but Paul Schrader

did a brilliant job writing it.

You know, God's lonely man and all

of Travis's monologues.

Did you get to talk to Schrader?

I've got to just screenplay.

Well, you know, it 12 years old, my mom.

If you saw a pal Schrader at that time,

he really was Travis Bickle, right?

He wore that army jacket

and he mumbled a lot and

he stayed up all night and stayed

up for hours and hours at a time.

He was like,

don't talk to him.

Whatever you do.

But that's funny because it's like,

you can play a prostitute

who's 12 years old in the movie,

but don't talk to the person who wrote this.

Well, yeah, look, I was an actor.

I finally understood through working

with Robert De Niro because he really took the time

to show me what acting was.

That it wasn't just saying lines

that somebody else wrote.

That it actually was creating a character.

Playing, you know, a 12-year-old sex worker.

And how did you feel about it?

How much did you understand what that meant?

And also the film has some pretty

explicit violence.

Yeah, I mean, I think that my mom knew

he was not a great artist,

which we loved Mean Streets.

We saw it three or four times.

My mom saw that I was interested in art and cinema

and took me to every foreign film she could find,

mostly because she wanted me to hear other languages.

But, you know, we went to very

dark, interesting German films

that lasted eight hours long.

And, you know, we saw all the French New Wave movies

and we had long conversations about movies

and what they meant.

And I think that she was 12.

You mean before you were 12?

Yeah. And some of them were inappropriate.

You know, some of the moments I remember was she'd be like,

why don't you go get police?

Let's go get popcorn,

because there were moments in the film

that were not appropriate for a kid.

Yeah, my mom was saying last time in Paris.

And my mom going like,

maybe this is a good time for you to go get a coke.

Did adults in the lady's room ever look at you and say,

what are you doing here?

Yeah, but I also think they admired her.

I think they knew that I was

and I'm precocious as a weird word.

I think I did have a skill that was beyond my years.

And I had a strong sense of self.

So, you know, I'm not very good at math.

I'm not terribly good at science.

But I did have a,

almost like an idiot savant ability

to understand emotions and character

that was beyond my years.

But you've also said that

it was hard for you to express emotion

unless you were acting.

Yes, and thank God I was acting.

So it gave me an outlet that I would not have had.

I had to develop.

It was a sync or swim.

I had to develop an emotional side.

I had to cut off my brain sometimes to play characters

in order to be good.

And I wanted to be good.

You know, if I was going to do something,

I wanted to be excellent.

So in order to do that,

I had to learn emotions.

And I had to learn not only how to access them,

but also how to control them

so that I could give them intention.

You've said the neurostate and character

during the whole shoot

and before it too.

So what he would do

is take you to a diner

and not necessarily say anything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He had a very travestical personality

during that shoot.

So he was pretty boring.

He was very awkward and very boring

and it was difficult for me.

I was a 12-year-old kid.

I was like, oh, God.

Here comes this guy again.

He's taking me to a diner

and he's going to not talk for 20 minutes.

And I would talk to the waiters.

And we also would run lines.

So we ran the lines.

You sort of a normal rehearsal process

or we ran the lines.

And I think by the third time,

he started going off

and improvising around the lines

and encouraging me to do the same

and trying to show me how to dip in.

So, you know, he would go off on a tangent,

some long improvised tangent.

And then I had to find the opportunity

for me to place my next line

to when was the right time.

And really talking about reactions.

How does that make you feel?

And he was the first person

that I ever took the time

to treat me like an actor.

Was that fun for you doing those improvs?

Oh, it was amazing.

It was just this huge eureka moment.

I'll never forget it.

And I remember being excited

and being kind of sweaty

in my heart racing when I came home

to the hotel room and came up in the elevator.

And I said to my mom,

like, wow, I finally get it.

I really get it.

And I want to be a part of this.

And I remember that summer, specifically,

because we were in New York City.

So, of course, he saw a million plays.

You know, I saw a Pippin

and a little night music and Chicago

and, you know, just all these

made-equests, all these amazing plays.

And we also went to see movies.

You know, we saw Panic and Needle Park

and we saw Straw Dogs

and all those films of that era.

And I suddenly was like,

oh, I want to be a part of this amazing thing

that I feel passionate about.

And it was just it all happened in a moment.

We have to take another short break here.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Jodie Foster

and her new film, which is in French,

is called A Private Life.

It opens January 16th

and select theaters and on the 30th more widely.

We'll be right back.

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So you had to undergo a psychological exam

because you were underage

before doing this very adult kind of role.

What was the evaluation like?

The evaluation was actually, it was suggested by my lawyer

because they were trying to stop me from playing the role.

The Board of Education had questions about it.

They had just gotten a lot of flak

because Brooke Shields would have just been in

the Louis Mell movie Pretty Baby.

And there was a lot of flak about that,

the kind of, you know, the sexuality of the movie

and her being served naked on a cake and stuff like that.

And so my lawyer, who was Pat Brown,

so that's Jerry Brown's dad.

That's a very cool bit of trivia.

He suggested that we do a psychological evaluation

so they took me to a child psychologist

and, you know, the guy just asked me a bunch of questions

like, what food do you like?

I was like, Chinese.

What movies do you like?

When I told them, very simple questions.

And I guess by that they determined

that I was just a normal person

and I would be fine.

And then I understood the difference between acting

and who I was as a person.

You know, you mentioned Brooke Shields and Pretty Baby.

She's very sexualized in that.

And you're sexualized in the sense

that you're a prostitute in it.

But at the same time, you're not acting sexy.

Right.

You know what I mean?

You're very like, hey, I'm doing my job.

You paid for me.

So like, let's do it.

You can leave after that.

You know, you're just like, let's get this done.

Which is kind of interesting.

Yeah, it was.

And that's why Scorsese wanted me for the part.

I mean, my mom was not convinced.

I remember going in for the meeting and her saying to him,

look, you know her.

And I came in my school uniform with a blazer

that had a crest on it.

Peter Pan collar and, you know, knee socks.

And she said, well, listen, if you think

that she can play this role, then great.

So I think he liked the contrast.

I think he liked the ambiguity of that,

of seeing somebody who's a child, you know,

in some ways who is sexualized as a woman,

but isn't a victim.

You had been in movies longer

than Scorsese was making them.

Or De Niro and Kitelle had been acting.

Did you ever give them advice?

No, I didn't give them any advice.

But I did make them feel more comfortable.

I think they were both very nervous.

This, you know, Robert De Niro, very nervous

when there's a moment where I have to, you know,

pull down his fly.

And in fact, they got my sister,

who was 21.

And I guess she looks a little bit like me,

but she's the same size as me.

And they had to bring her on in order

to actually physically do the shot

where she has to unzip his fly.

And he was just so nervous.

They were both so nervous that they kept giggling.

When we were doing the rehearsals.

And then De Niro would be like, no, I got this.

I got this.

And then he would start talking to me and say, well, you know,

maybe you can put your arm around my shoulder.

And then he would start laughing.

And I made them feel comfortable and go like,

look, here, how about this?

How about if I put my hand here?

You put your hand there.

We do this like this.

I mean, kind of like, you know, nowadays,

when you do the sex scenes or any kind of scene

that's there's physical contact,

we have what's called, wow,

what are they called that?

Intimacy coordinator.

Intimacy coordinator.

Exactly.

I've never had an intimacy coordinator

until I did true detective.

And there I was, you know, almost 60 years old

and going like, wow, this is amazing.

Where have you intimacy coordinators been my whole life?

You know, we actors were just busy working it out together.

You know, trying to say like, how can we make

this very awkward thing not so awkward?

So I just want to say again that taxi driver celebrates

its 50th anniversary in February.

And if you haven't seen the film, it's so good.

It's a great, great movie.

So you might not want to talk about this.

But did you ever feel like,

if the Me Too movement had been around

when whatever happened

that you would be a part of that movement?

You know, I'm not 100% sure why.

And I have discussed this with some other actors

where I see what happened to Me Too movement.

And it's appalling.

And I was completely unaware of that.

And how come I didn't, you know,

how come I never fell into that category?

And what happened?

What saved me?

And I really had to examine that.

Like, how did I get saved?

There were microaggressions, of course,

that are, you know, anybody who's in the workplace

has, you know, misogynist microaggressions.

Like, that's just a part of being a woman, right?

But what kept me from having those bad experiences,

those terrible experiences?

And what I came to believe,

and you can tell me if you think this is wrong,

is that I had a certain amount of power

by the time I was like 12.

So by the time I had my first Oscar nomination,

I was part of a different category of people that had power.

And I was too dangerous to touch.

I could have, you know, ruined people's careers

or I could have called Uncle.

So I wasn't on the block.

It also might be just my personality, you know,

that I am a headfirst person.

And I approached the world in a headfirst way.

It's very difficult to emotionally manipulate me

because I don't operate with my emotions on the surface.

Predators use whatever they can in order to manipulate

and get people to do what they want them to.

And that's much easier when the person is younger,

when the person is weaker, when the person has no power.

That's precisely what predatory behavior is about,

is using power in order to diminish people

in order to dominate them.

And, you know, if you're a 50-year-old man,

it's not hard to do that to a 13-year-old.

Because you're going to be dominant,

you're going to, you know, know how to talk to people, you know.

So I got very lucky to be protected as a young person

by my mom and by the good men around me

that cared about me, that were father figures

that didn't want anything bad ever happened to me.

You had asked if I agreed with your perspective,

and I certainly do.

But I'm wondering, you know, you had played,

even, you know, even as a kid,

and certainly in taxi driver,

like, girls who could talk back,

girls who could talk kind of tough,

girls who could challenge.

Did that help you in life?

Because you knew what it was to talk that way.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess so, yeah.

I guess I was empowered by the people I played in some ways.

And I also was born a powerful person.

Don't ask me why.

Sometimes, you know, I'm five foot three

and every once in a while,

when somebody's doing some shenanigans,

I get out of my car, I slam the door,

and I say, show me your license.

Really?

And shockingly, people do it,

or they, you know, are they listened to me

because I played a powerful person on TV

or because I was born that way or,

I don't know, you know, maybe that's the Karen in me,

that believes that somehow I should be listened to.

I really should be listened to.

I deserve to be listened to.

You know, I do think that that has a lot to do

who I am in the public sphere,

the personality that I was born with,

but also that I had to develop in order to stay safe

and to stay powerful,

has kept me away from a lot of bad stories.

Can you give an example of a time

you slam the door and said, show me your license?

Ah, well, yeah, it was, yeah, it was a real thing,

I suppose, where I saw somebody being bullied

in a car situation, yeah, and I got out of the car

and was like, okay, you stand over there,

and you stand over there, I want you 10 feet apart,

you know, that kind of thing.

Wow.

But all five three of me.

But yeah, I remember being in a situation,

I was honest, you know, not to be named,

I was on a movie set with a, you know, powerful

out of control actor.

And he called me to his home,

and there were some lots of problems happening on the set,

and I just called you here,

because I wanted to tell you that I think

your behavior on set has been terrible.

And I feel like you're not participating in the movie,

you're not doing your best work.

And I don't know what all this school stuff is

that you're doing, and all of this,

other stuff that you're concentrating on,

that's not the movie,

but I'm really disappointed in you,

and I think that you need to be more a part of things,

and what do you think about that?

I waited five minutes, I swallowed, and I said,

I think that you've made very few movies

that you don't have any experience,

I've made a lot of them,

I think you have a courageous behavior on set,

and you may not understand what my education means to me,

that's fine that you're ignorant,

but it really doesn't, you know,

and I went on this, like, I don't know where it came from,

but I went on this super, you know, articulate rant,

and at the end of it, there was a pause,

and he said, okay, I'll meet you downstairs.

He was like, oh, whatever, you know,

and so I guess when I look back at that moment,

I'd be like, oh, was that, oh,

what was going to happen there?

What did he think was going to happen?

When he said all this horrible mean things to me,

did he think I was going to cry?

I think I was going to go like, oh, you're right,

I'm terrible, I'm so bad.

Like, what do you think was going to happen?

Probably that's what he thought was going to happen.

Yeah, and I have had other circumstances

where, you know, a director, for example,

during the scene was, you know,

screaming at me, calling me terrible names,

you know, and trying to get a reaction out of me,

and I don't react that way.

I say things like, wow,

I'm sorry, you feel that way.

I respond with my head when somebody comes at me with a knife.

That's really interesting.

We have to take another short break here.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Jodie Foster

and her new film, which is in French,

is called A Private Life.

It opens January 16th in select theaters

and on the 30th, more widely.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

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So I want to go back to 2013 in our retrospective

when you want a Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award.

And this acceptance speech was a speech

and a lot of people took notice of.

So I'm just going to play this clip.

Sure. Okay, here we go.

I hope that you're not disappointed

that there won't be a big coming out speech tonight

because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago

back in the Stone Age in those very quaint days

when a fragile young girl would open up

to trusted friends and family co-workers

and then gradually, probably, to everyone who knew her

to everyone she actually met.

But now, apparently, I'm told that every celebrity

is expected to honor the details of their private life

with a press conference of fragrance

and a prime time reality show.

And, you know, you guys might be surprised,

but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.

No, I'm sorry, that's just not me.

It never was and it never will be.

But please don't cry because my reality show

would be so boring.

I would have to make out with Malion Kothiar

or I'd have to spank Daniel Craig's bottom.

You know, just to stay on the air.

It's, you know, not bad work. You can get it, though.

But seriously, if you had been a public figure

from the time that you were toddler,

if you had to fight for a life that felt real

and honest and normal against all odds,

then maybe then you too might value privacy above all else.

Okay, so it's...

Wow, that was a lot. Yeah.

But you really tease it.

It's like, I'm going to come out as gay.

And I really like what you said about people expect you

if you're in the public eye

and you're gay, that you have to issue a press release about it.

Well, I don't know that that's just about your sexuality.

I think that that's what people, they expect celebrity culture.

And I did not want to participate in celebrity culture.

I wanted to make movies that I loved.

I wanted to give everything of myself on screen.

And I wanted to survive intact by having a life.

And was that in part because you're a private person.

And that's the way you are.

But also because you didn't want to come out as gay

because it would have inspired so much gossip

and distraction and maybe a loss of roles.

What's important to consider is that I grew up in a different time

where people couldn't be who they were.

And we didn't have the kinds of freedoms that we have now.

And I look at my son's generation and bless them

that they have a kind of justice that we just didn't have access to.

And I did the best I could.

I had a big plan in mind of making films

that could make people better.

And that's all I wanted to do was make movies.

I didn't want to be a public figure or a pioneer or any of those things.

And I benefited from all of the pioneers that came before me.

That did that hard work of having tomatoes thrown at them

and being unsafe.

And I thank them.

But we don't all have to have the same role.

And I think my role was making movies that mattered

and creating female characters that were human characters.

And creating a huge body of work

and then being able to look back at the pattern of that body of work

and go like, oh wow, Jody was.

She played a doctor.

She played a mother.

She played a scientist.

She played an astronaut.

She played, you know, she killed all the bad guys.

So, you know, she did all of those things.

And, you know, had a lesbian wife and had two kids.

And, you know, was a complete person that had a whole other life.

And I think that will be valuable someday down the line

that I was able to keep my life intact and leave a legacy.

Jody Foster, I've enjoyed this so much.

Thank you so much for coming back to the show.

Thank you.

And good luck with the new movie.

And I hope you talk again.

Me too.

Jody Foster stars in the new film, A Private Life.

It opens in select theaters Friday and opens more widely on the 30th.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about Marco Rubio.

He once called President Donald Trump, a con artist.

Now a Secretary of State.

He's defending policies he once opposed.

And overseeing deep cuts to the very foreign aid programs

he once supported.

New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins will talk about his new article

on Rubio's political transformation.

I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews,

follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Brigger.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers

and Mabel DeNotto, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth,

Anna Bauman, Fayette Challener, Susan Nykindi, and Nico Gonzalez-Whisler.

Our digital media producer is Molly C. V. Nesper.

Roberta Shorot directs the show.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Terry Gross.

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