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Jodie Foster Partial Interview: iofilm.co.uk
For the entire article, please go to:
http://www.iofilm.co.uk/feats/interviews/j/jodie_foster.shtml
No Reason To Panic
2 April 2002
Jodie Foster talks to Paul Fischer about her new film Panic Room, a project which brought into focus her attitudes to parenthood
Panic attack: Jodie Foster as a woman holed up with her daughter in a secure room during a home invasion in Panic Room
She may be a mother of three and a star drawn to often smaller projects, but Jodie Foster, even when pregnant, had no fear about stepping into the shoes of Nicole Kidman, as she did with David Fincher's riveting Panic Room.
Jodie Foster turns 40 this year, but you wouldn't know it. Far more petite than she appears on screen, and impeccably attired in an olive green trouser suit, Foster was in great spirits and full of humour when we met to chat about her latest film, Panic Room, a thriller which has already proved a box office hit stateside. In the film she plays the mother of a diabetic daughter, being hounded by a trio of menacing home invaders, while holed up in a fortress-like room.
Lights, camera, action
Some actors thrive on the fantasy element of being an "action heroine" on screen. Foster laughs at the label. "I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean."
Foster herself looked more than lean doing battle with her enemies, but from the first week or two of shooting, Foster was pregnant, adding more headaches to an already troubled production.
"I did a lot of sleeping, and I remember Kristen [Stewart, who plays her daughter] made fun of me constantly because every time she'd ask me what I had for lunch, it would be: 'Well actually I slept through lunch' I did a lot of sleeping and sometimes I would sleep in between set-ups," the actress laughingly recalls.
Though this isn't the first time that the two-time Oscar winner had played a mother on screen, despite her own reality of motherhood to draw upon, Foster happily admits "that even before I had my first child, I think I was kind of a pretty material person, which is just part of my make-up."
Yet, she adds, "there is a little switch that still goes off which is hard to explain. I think intellectually you know that you're doing it for your child, but it's just a visceral feeling that you've experienced before - of almost projecting everything, every fear that you have, on to that."
An easy decision
For Foster, Panic Room came to her by accident. Some two weeks into shooting, star Nicole Kidman dropped out due to a shoulder injury. Ironically, Foster, had begun work on Flora Plum and its star, Russell Crowe, had become injured causing Foster's film to shut down.
"So I happened to be available, and I didn't have any plans for the rest of the year." It wasn't tough for Foster to be persuaded to jump aboard Panic Room. "I love Fincher, have known him for a long time, have wanted to work with him for ages and I followed what he does. So I knew of the project immediately, had already read the script and had friends on the movie too, so frankly, I came to them as quickly as they came to me and offered my services."
Foster says she that was attracted to Panic Room's "beautiful, lean, spare script, and that kind of discipline, the discipline of saying, 'Okay, I'm not going to write 45 minutes of backstory to tell you who the characters are. Instead, the movie's just going to start, and all of the drama you're going to need to know, to be connected to everybody, to know why they have the relationships that they do, is going to be within the plot, within the drama of the film,' which is really hard to do. You just don't see movies like that."
Also, within the genre, one rarely sees the kind of character arc Foster is allowed to embark on throughout the film, beginning as she does, somewhat placid and conservative. . . .