Jodie Foster Quotations

My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you're most ashamed of.

People are always surprised when I say that I'm an atheist.

It's very hard for me to get a new car. It's really hard for me to get a new house. It's really hard for me to move on from the things that give me stability.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize.

If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable.

I feel at various times in my life that I've been at a point where I had to choose between a death sentence and a life sentence. And I want to live. What do I do to live? What do I do to be vital? And the answer is always creativity. The answer is always art.

As an actor, I'm attracted to drama; as a director, it's humor - because it's the story of my life, and I can't be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.

I never know what's going to move me. I'm always surprised. And it's always a mystery to the people who work with me.

I will always love psychology, and the basis of psychology is family.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

I like to be in a different place when I make a movie so that I can't really focus on anything else, and that is your world.

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I'm always on time - or early.

I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern.

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.

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.

But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.

I don't make movies because I love to act. I make movies because I like to make movies, and I like to be a part of that process.

There are conscious reasons and unconscious reasons why I pick something. You know, I have to be moved by the story and usually that means it has to touch me in some kind of personal place.

She was perhaps one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and yet her name will forever be linked to the horror of Nazi Germany. There is no other woman in the 20th century who has been so admired and vilified simultaneously.

'Silence Of The Lambs' was not something people expected me to do.

My kids are at the age now where they are both in school.

never wants to feel resentful on a film again. I can never work again for a bad person with a huge ego.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

He is the foremost reason I wanted to make the movie. I'd never been right for one of his movies.

It becomes this weird reality 12 hours a day stuck inside this tube. Half the time the (background actors) were really sleeping. It was like a real airplane, so they were all knocked out.

I think every movie changes me and is life changing, especially movies you direct.

It doesn't feel like a long time to me. My life is full. I have new priorities. I've been working a long time, so now I do movies for a different reason than I did for much of my career.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

I think it works better with a woman, which is why I decided to do it, ... men know how to separate themselves from their child. Women lose that ability.

That was heartbreaking, to have that fall apart, two weeks before shooting,

You have to make a big effort to try to have a life, and that's important to you only if you spent your entire childhood not having one,

Every time I go to leave for work he'll say, 'Are you going to be an astronaut today and find space aliens?' ... I'll say, 'No, honey. No spacesuit for me today.

Every movie that I've had to really knock down the door for has been an enormous success for me. Not just like a financial success but a real personal success.

Every movie changes you. The process of making a film changes you.

Anna changes. That's something that neither Deborah Kerr or Irene Dunne could do. They had to start off soft and stay that way. In our version, she's sort of tough and stubborn, but as time goes on she softens.

Each brings his prejudices to the table. At first, she thinks he's a heathen and a barbarian. Then, he reminds her that her native England has invaded other countries, and the English believe their way is the only way. As they grow to understand each other, it becomes a love story.

I stand to make more money doing that sequel than I've ever made in my life,

The movie worked because people believed in her heroism. I won't play her with negative attributes she'd never have.

There's a kind of intensity that she has, and a real focus, ... I can glean from her personality that she's going to have a very long career and is going to be a very centered person. You just look at her and go, wow, this kid has really got it together, and it's just so nice to see.

They're not your movie star; they're not your big names. ... There's something about their work and their inner life that I just love and am so attracted to.

It's kind of about a vigilante, somebody who has been the victim of a crime and who can't quite get over it and then finds herself mowing people down.

It's a primal thing, this very unconscious place with the fears of what can happen to your children and will you be able to keep them safe. I like all the different levels of fear that she goes through, from feeling like her daughter's out there somewhere, to worrying that somebody is hurting her. Then there's that place of utter desperation where you wonder if you're completely insane. Then there's that final turn, when she turns into a robot who will take anyone down.

It was like working on a cruise ship.

The world is littered with movies about people that are depressed that either did not come out or are not successful.

Once I had kids, my life with them became so significant, ... So something else has to really be important to drag me away. I have an identity that's very strong without being an actor. I don't need to do that just to be someone. I exist as a person without necessarily being an actor.

Once I had kids, my life with them became so significant,

I just want to make movies. I really love movies. I want to be involved with them.

In a post-9/11 world, everybody is looking over their shoulder and wondering if the next guy is the one who is going to take you down.

I read more than I do anything else, probably. I read about three books a week.

I don't like the outside world to intrude when I'm making a film. I like to either see my family or work, but I don't like to go out.

I do almost all my movies in French. I dub them.

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.

Caitriona Balfe, who is Irish, is also in my movie. I asked her to play her Irish accent in the movie, but her own brogue is so faint that I had to keep pumping it up.

I did a couple of plays in junior high school, maybe high school, and then I did a play in college.

Going back and forth between the press and something like The Crucible must be really crazy and intense.

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.

Where I have problems is when I am in the midst of doing something that I am completely focused on, and then I am asked to buy shoes or something.

a woman who struggles to recover from a brutal attack and sets out on a dark, psychological and physical journey for revenge and justice.

Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive... women didn't go to Vietnam and blow things up. They are not Rambo.

If I fail, at least I will have failed my way.

Actors become actors because they loved entertaining their family by putting on the lampshade and dancing around as a kid, ... That's not my personality. For me, the fun part of making movies is seeing it as a director sees it. I like the architecture of movies. I like knowing what's coming and working to set that up.

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times.

I guess I've played a lot of victims, but that's what a lot of the history of women is about.

There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there.

It's a skill that people are born with. Either you're a focuser or you're a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God, we celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids.

I think it's important that when people are struggling, that you not run away from them if you love them. Kristen, I mean, I look at the room tonight, you know, Kristen Stewart and Claire Danes, Jennifer Lawrence, all these young women that I worked with who basically were child actors like I was a child actor. And then I feel very protective of them, because even though I think I have managed to get through the process relatively sanely, I have my scars, and I hope to be in some ways a member of their family that's out there protecting them.

Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. Hopefully in the process you don't lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and - finally - the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don't let them take that away from you.

I made, like, five movies while I was in college. I think they just weren't memorable movies. I've taken breaks as the years have gone on - I burn out every once in a while.

I had to take my makeup off at work every night. I wasn't allowed to do it at home because my mom said that when your work day is done, you're done with work.

I'm not interested in being perfect when im older. Im interested in having a narrative. It's the narrative that's really the most beautiful thing about women.

I conducted a bunch of interviews for Interview magazine. They actually paid me. I think I was probably 18 or 19. I was in college and I remember feeling, like, "Wow." I had a real job, and they paid me money, and it was exciting.

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.

With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.

I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'

What do I do to live? What do I do to be vital? The answer is always creativity; the answer is always art.

There's absolutely no sort of acknowledgment or reward for this - except for the intangible of my kids growing up to be wonderful people.

As an actor, I'm always playing solitary characters. But as a director, I'm always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people's lives and how they intertwine.

I look back at my career when I was younger and can connect what I was going through at the time with the characters I was playing. I see the similarities in them reflecting on my life.

Any actor working a long time should know how a shot is set up, where to place themselves, how to handle the lines. I'm a member of the crew, like the best boy, the electrician. What I'm good at is making eyes at the camera.

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I'm always more energized by directing. It's more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It's a huge passion for me.

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.

It's very important to distinguish between chemical depression that requires medication and talk therapy.

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 make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

I didn't work very much when they were young, and I had the luxury to be able to do that. Most people can't.

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 don't like it when reviews aren't about the movie. When they're about how much money somebody made, or who they're sleeping with, or if they got the job via some connection, or about how Fox is putting X amount of dollars into it.

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.

What the digital age has offered us, in terms of connectivity and transparency, is that all of these people from weird places in the world are all talking to each other, at four in the morning, and are sharing ideas. There's more openness than has ever been known, so that's a good thing.

I like dramas. I've always liked dramas. And I'm a pretty light person. I don't consider myself a very dramatic person. But I do like doing that onscreen.