Jodie Foster
I had a prodigious life, living in a grown-up world when I was a child. But I think my abilities were about perceptiveness, and they were about examining psychology and examining people and relationships.
Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.
Everybody reads for me. I was never weird about that. I never minded coming in and reading. They should know if I'm the right person, and I should know if I want to do a movie.
I don't see anyone walking around with a puppet on his hand in real life. Puppet therapy is very common for children. It's not something that adults take on.
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.
'Taxi Driver' was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I didn't become a weirdo and squawk like a chicken.
As I've said before, and I still hold to, I truly am the most boring person alive. And if there was a great investigation to be found at the end of the resume, it would be, the most boring person alive.
Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.
Boys are easy. I mean, there are just a lot of bruises when they're young. With boys, you get a lot of accidental jabs in the eye and stepping on your feet, and those tantrums they cause when they don't want to leave the toy store.
I just want to make movies. I really love movies. I want to be involved with them.
Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.
I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.
I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.
Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area.
But now I really don't want to work unless I really, really care about a project.
People are always surprised when I say that I'm an atheist.
By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.
But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.
Every movie changes you. The process of making a film changes you.
I wish that I spoke more languages. I speak a couple languages, but not well enough to really dub myself. French is really the only one, and it's a difficult thing.
I guess I've played a lot of victims, but that's what a lot of the history of women is about.
I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.
I'd like to be Dakota Fanning when I get young.
I think anybody over 30 plays parents because it happens in your thirties and so that's kind of a natural progression. But I'm definitely drawn to it. It's probably the most intense, passionate thing that happens to you as you get older.
I spent a lot of time not in school, so I didn't have deep relationships with kids my own age.
I don't have a burning desire to act, strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.
I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.
I think Anna and the King is a look at Asia from the Asian perspective, reflecting the Asian experience, which is very rare.
My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.
'Silence Of The Lambs' was not something people expected me to do.
I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it.
I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.
I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern.
I want to be inspiring to myself, to my kids, my family, and my friends.
I wish people could get over the hang-up of subtitles, although at the same time, you know, that's kind of why I'm kind of pro dubbing.
I'm kind of a chatterbox and I talk really fast.
Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.
My kids are young and my life with them is really stimulating and really full and significant.
So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.
The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.
The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.
Well, I certainly was exposed to and learned to appreciate the work of great directors early on. As a kid, my mother used to take me to see really interesting arty films in Los Angeles.
You develop a third eye where you kind of know where they are in a room at all times but no matter how vigilant you are as a parent, at some point, you'll look around a room and can't find them and there's a searing pain that goes through your body.
I don't know why people think child actresses in particular are screwed up. I see kids everywhere who are totally bored. I've never been bored a day in my life.
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.
There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current. And wouldn't you know that your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become. This path does not belong to your parents, your teachers, your leaders, or your lovers. Your path is your character defining itself more and more every day.Collection: Inspiring
Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.Collection: Live Your Life
I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.Collection: Years