Jodie Foster talks for 'The Beaver,' Mel Gibson
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK � For a woman who has won two Oscars and earned countless critical plaudits throughout her 45-year acting career, there's nothing jaded, blas� or world-weary about Jodie Foster.
By Ken Regan, Summit Entertainment
Jodie Foster not only stars but directs The Beaver. Mel Gibson plays her husband, a man who can express himself only through a hand puppet.
By Ken Regan, Summit Entertainment
Jodie Foster not only stars but directs The Beaver. Mel Gibson plays her husband, a man who can express himself only through a hand puppet.
The petite woman with the straight streaked hair tucked behind her ears and clad in a striped T-shirt, cardigan and jeans grins with childlike glee when she recounts how she spent the previous two days. First, she stopped by the American Museum of Natural History to see the Brain: The Inside Story exhibit, which left Foster "so excited, I couldn't eat," she says.
She followed that up by scoring impossible-to-get tickets to see The Book of Mormon on Broadway. "It is absolutely genius. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's so irreverent. That's my perfect day," Foster says with a sigh.
Foster, 48, exudes a sense of ease in her own skin, a knowledge of who she is and what she wants. To use self-help parlance, she doesn't sweat the small stuff. "Life becomes more economical as you get older," she says.
And that stance applies to her latest movie, The Beaver, a dramedy directed by Foster and starring Mel Gibson as an emotionally comatose man wielding a hand puppet. In the film, which expands to more theaters this weekend after an underwhelming box-office performance in limited release, Gibson plays a father and toy company owner who comes to life with the help of an obnoxious furry appendage who orders Gibson's near-catatonic Walter to get over himself . Active both behind and in front of the camera, Foster plays his patient yet ultimately frustrated wife.
The odd little movie was already topically a tough sell ? and that was before Gibson's misbehaving overshadowed anything a Hollywood screenwriter could cook up. Foster was aware, before the movie opened, that it was "not for everyone. I don't really make movies that have to be for everyone. I was really moved by a movie that talked about so many incredibly deep things, and things that touched me about family and sadness and loneliness. It's the movie I really wanted to make," she says, adding ruefully that "it's been a weird path."
No kidding. Foster is, of course, referring to her star's notorious image implosion as Gibson made headlines for vitriolic, threatening voice-mails left to his former girlfriend and the mother of infant daughter Lucia. That, coupled with the anti-Semitic comments he made after his 2006 arrest for drunken driving, has made him Hollywood's actor non grata and seemingly left audiences unable to separate the man from the respected actor. Gibson has retreated from the public eye, leaving Foster to speak on his behalf and promote their film.
"He has a weird mouth. As we know, he says anything that comes out of his head," she says.
Not that Foster has appointed herself Gibson's apologist or one-woman PR machine. "I'm not defending him. I can't defend what he does. He has to defend what he does," Foster says. "He's an excellent actor. He's a great friend. He's someone I love. When you love somebody, you don't just run away from them when they're struggling. I will always be there."
On a moment's notice
She recounts an example of her unlikely friendship with Gibson. The two are antithetical in many ways: he's a conservative Catholic, she's an atheist. Yet both are voracious readers and debate books, ideas, beliefs. And Gibson, Foster says, is sensitive and intuitive. If you, say, hit your head on a tree and don't know where to turn as blood gushes down your face, Gibson will turn up with a first-aid kit.
"I was running outside for a newspaper, and I didn't have my shoes on and banged into a tree that had fallen. My head erupted in blood. I was disoriented," Foster recounts. "The phone rang. I hadn't talked to Mel in months and months and months. He was like, 'Hey.' I told him I think I ran into a tree. I don't know what happened to me. He's like, 'Just stay where you are.' In five minutes, he came running up with a bag of Tibetan (stuff) and arnica and stuff that he put on my head. I can call him at the 3 in the morning, after not having seen him in five years. There are not very many people in my life that I feel that way about."
Gibson returns the favor, via e-mail. He has known the actress since they co-starred in 1994's Maverick, and though they don't talk every day, the two are tight. He describes Foster as "strong, honest and giving. That's hardly scratching the surface of her complexity that I would never presume to decipher but merely admire. The ethics she displays personally and professionally are a rarity in a tough game. There is an enormous heart in there."
And an unexpected lightness. Foster, who soars on screen playing intense, driven women ? haunted but steely investigator Clarice Starling in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, rape victim Sarah Tobias in 1988's The Accused, ferociously fierce mom Meg Altman in 2002's Panic Room? is playful and irreverent in person.
Her new routine on the weekends, for example? Donning an oversized jersey, drinking a beer and watching burly men pummel one another on the football field. Yes, Foster has now become an avid follower of the NFL, she says, because watching sports is the only way she can rest her brain.
"She's as cool and down-to-earth as you might suspect. With that comes a wicked sense of humor that people wouldn't think she has. A lot of her roles are serious roles, but she doesn't take herself too seriously," says Susan Downey, who produced her 2007 vigilante drama The Brave One.
Shielding her sons
Nor is she walled-off or guarded in person, despite the little that is known about Foster's personal life.
"One would imagine her to be fiercely private. She's not. She's very relaxed and warm," says Kate Winslet, Foster's co-star in the 2012 drama Carnage. "She's so much fuzzier than you'd think. That sounds flippant, but she's comfy and soft and warm and open. She's not at all private and aloof. I can't believe I ever imagined her that way. But I do think she's private about the things that are important to her to be private about."
Indeed, Foster regales you with stories about her sons, Charlie, 12, and Kit, 9. The older one is a confident charmer, the younger an artsy dreamer. She talks about the ordeal of breastfeeding each boy for six months. About how she never let them snooze in her bed as babies, and now, they're champion sleepers who love their own rooms. About doing Charlie's hair in the morning, because he likes having her help. But her openness does not extend to identifying their father, whom Foster has never named publicly, or divulging details about her private life and her sexuality.
Foster, who began working as a toddler and got noticed as a precocious preteen prostitute in Taxi Driver, has made every effort to give her sons the opposite kind of upbringing from hers.
"If you've grown up in the public eye and that's important to you, you know how to do that. I don't go to the Newsroom on Robertson. You know where the spots are," says Foster, referring to L.A.'s see-and-be-seen locales. "And look, you've never seen anything about Mel's kids, either. You don't know what they look like. That's who he is. You try to organize your life so you're not a reality show."
Foster and family live in Los Angeles, but she plans to move to Manhattan, where she owns an apartment, so her sons can experience a sense of independence that isn't possible when mom has to chauffeur you everywhere. And she only recently let her sons watch a few of her movies: Nim's Island, Bugsy Malone, Contact, after shielding them from her professional persona as long as possible.
"They never saw a movie of mine until this year," Foster says. "Now I feel like they're ready to have some understanding of who I am. I really didn't want them to have that experience. I didn't want them to see me in some projected light in any way."
That same desire for normalcy seems to apply to every facet of her life. Foster doesn't brag about her achievements, impressive though they are, nor does she name-drop. And she doesn't hold her own work in particularly high regard. In another life, the Yale graduate and bookworm ? now reading Mary Karr's Lit on her iPad ? might have been a speechwriter, a teacher or a lawyer. Foster says acting doesn't come naturally to her, perhaps because she never studied at Juilliard, and for her to commit to a film, it has to viscerally move her.
"I can't perform in something I don't care about. I can't do it. I mean I'm bad, is what I mean," she says.
If Foster has a serious flaw, it's her inability to bask in well-deserved flattery, Winslet says.
"I would tell her, 'I learned so much from you.' And she'd be so slightly sheepish and embarrassed and say, 'Thanks, hon,'" Winslet says. "She'll never take the (expletive) compliment and walk away. She's a heavy hitter. She's been around as long as I can remember. She never makes you feel that way, as though she's got all this wisdom and knowledge."
Julie Benz Scarlett Chorvat Larissa Meek Brooke Burns Michelle Behennah
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