Jodie Foster Said She “Never Would Have Chosen” To Be An Actor, But Was Forced Into It At Age 3
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It’s fair to say that Jodie Foster is one of the most esteemed actors out there, with the star having two Best Actress Oscars under her belt for her performances in perhaps two of her most renowned films: The Accused, and The Silence Of The Lambs.
But few are aware of just how long Jodie has been in the industry for, with the 63-year-old star making her acting debut in the 1960s. She appeared in commercials from the age of 3, and her first credited TV appearance was in an episode of Mayberry R.F.D. back in 1968, when she was 5 years old.
Her feature film debut came the following year, when she was 6 years old, and she worked steadily throughout her childhood with appearances in TV shows like My Three Sons and Paper Moon while also starring in her fair share of movies, like the 1973 adaptation of Tom Sawyer, when she was 10.
And Jodie arguably achieved more at the age of 13 than many people do in their entire lives, with three of her most iconic films: Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone, and the original Freaky Friday movie all coming out in 1976.
But despite sticking with acting throughout her life, Jodie admitted during a career-spanning conversation at the Marrakech Film Festival on Sunday that, given the choice, she wouldn’t have ever chosen this path for herself as she branded acting a “cruel job” that she doesn’t have the “personality” for.
Per Variety, Jodie confessed: “I would never have chosen to be an actor, I don’t have the personality of an actor. I’m not somebody that wants to dance on a table and, you know, sing songs for people.”
“It’s actually just a cruel job that was chosen for me as a young person that I don’t remember starting,” she went on. “So right there, it makes my work a little bit different because I am not interested in acting just for the sake of acting. If I was on a desert island, I think probably the last thing I would ever do is act. So I was just trying to survive.”
Jodie went on to admit that, perhaps for this reason, she is concerned for “the young child actors of this era,” and privately reaches out to them.
“I feel like: ‘Wait, where are their parents? And why is nobody telling them that they should stop doing so many movies or maybe not be so drunk on the red carpet?’” she said. “I want to take care of them because I know how dangerous it is.”
“I don’t know why anyone would want to be an actor now, if they knew that in order to be excellent they would have to contend with being robbed of their life in a way,” Jodie then confessed. “I don’t know how you make sense of that except to have what my mom helped me do, which is to have this very firm delineation between your private life and your public life.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Jodie reflected on learning from her now-industry peer Robert De Niro when they worked together on Taxi Driver. He was 33 years old at the time, and she was 12, and found him “really uninteresting” due to his commitment to method acting — but that changed over a pretty significant lunch together.
“He finally walked me through improvisation by the time we had our third lunch together, and it opened my eyes to what acting could be,” she said. “And I realized at 12: ‘Oh, it’s my fault because I haven’t brought enough to the table.’ I’ve just been saying lines and waiting for my next line and acting naturally, but building a character is something different.”
“And I remember how excited I was,” Jodie went on. “I remember being kind of sweaty and excited and giggly and coming back up into the hotel room to meet my mom and saying: ‘I’ve had this epiphany.’ And I think from there, everything changed.”
In the almost-five decades since that fateful lunch, Jodie’s career has consistently thrived — so even if she genuinely doesn’t think she was cut out to be an actor, the evidence certainly suggests otherwise.
As always, let me know your thoughts on Jodie’s comments down below!
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