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On her own terms
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As an actress, she chooses roles that are different, characters who fight for what they believe in. UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA reviews the career of Jodie Foster.
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Jodie Foster in `Anna and the King'
JUST as one begins to wonder whether Jodie Foster's long sabbatical from film is turning into early retirement, she reappears: this year, in the claustrophobic, stomach-tightening "Panic Room", as a single mother negotiating with armed criminals for her daughter's life. In another new film, "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys", Foster plays a one-legged nun, Sister Ascension. Foster had her second child last year; and her third film as a director, "Flora Plum", is scheduled for release soon. A busy year, but normal for her.
At 40, Foster is fiercely independent. She is a choosy actress (one film every other year will do, she says). She is the mother of two boys, whose father's identity remains a mystery, while her own sexual orientation has been the subject of intense speculation. An actress who has lived life on her own terms, from movie roles, to directorial ventures, to having children — Foster has definitely been unusual. "Normal is not something to aspire to. It's something to get away from," this thinking person's pin-up girl has said.
Foster's own life has certainly been far from normal. Her father left her mother when Evelyn "Brandy" Foster was expecting her youngest child, Jodie. As a child, Jodie was already the Coppertone tyke. Her Southern California life was not merely unconventional: with a single parent who was also the aggressive manager of her children's careers, the Foster children had to grow up early. By the age of 14, Jodie had already acted in two films by Martin Scorcese — first as the blasé, shop-lifting Audrey in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974), and then, unforgettably, as Iris, the child prostitute, in the dark classic "Taxi Driver"(1976). Before she was 30, she had won two Best Actress Oscars, in the space of three years, for "The Accused" (1988) and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
But it is the visceral "Taxi Driver" that has remained her best film. Can one ever forget her Iris, that sweet-faced child hooker who walks those nightmarish streets? As the vulnerable child prostitute who becomes the desperate obsession of Travis Bickle (Robert de Niro), Jodie symbolises a rare innocence and street wisdom. Sweetness and sadness.
A Palme D'Or winner at Cannes, "Taxi Driver" got her a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Oscars. The film also got Foster her first set of fans — one of them more ardent and obsessive than the others. John Hinckley Jr., her fan from hell, started stalking Foster while she was a student at Yale, trying to get a normal education (and from where she graduated in literature, despite the stalking, magna cum laude in1985; Yale later gave her an honorary Doctorate). In1981, in a desperate act to impress Foster, Hinckley attempted to shoot President Reagan, in a throwback to a "Taxi Driver" scene.
Foster has chosen her roles carefully from Hollywood fare, such as it is, and her choices have paid off. In "The Accused", an intense film based on a vicious real-life gang rape, she plays Sarah Tobias, the foul-mouthed "trailer-trash" waitress who is gang-raped. A victim who refuses to let her rapists get away with their crime. In the psycho-thriller "The Silence of the Lambs", she plays the determined rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling who ends a series of gruesome killings. "The Accused" would have been unmemorable, except for Foster's explosive performance; "The Silence of the Lambs" would have been little more than a feast of blood and gore, but for Jodie Foster. She blazed life into the roles, not as the Lara Croft or "Charlie's Angels" type of action heroines, but as courageous women who fight for what they believe in.
`Panic Room'
She has chosen her roles with reasonable integrity, even passing up the blood-and-gore sequel to "The Silence of The Lambs", entitled "Hannibal". There is speculation that this was because the sequel hinted at a relationship between Starling and Hannibal — something Foster found unacceptable.
She has also exercised her creative independence in making and producing films. "Nell", the first enterprise of her production company Egg, was a success. Her earlier two directorial ventures "Little Man Tate" and "Home for the Holidays" have only been moderate successes, nowhere near her triumphs as an actress. Her films as a director can be traced back to her own childhood.
"Little Man Tate" is as much about a single mother and her close relationship with her son as it is about an unusually gifted little boy. Some of the better moments in the film are between Jodie (who plays the mother) and the boy, and there is a compelling tenderness about the enterprise.
But "Home for the Holidays", starring Holly Hunter, is a mawkish Thanksgiving tale about children growing up, parents growing old, and families growing apart.
As an actress, Foster acts characters who are different, who teach and inspire, she has said, "to be brave in ways I am not". Her roles have been wide and diverse. "I go for complexity, and usually the truth is complex," she has said. From dark visions of violence ("Taxi Driver"), period pieces ("Sommersby", "Maverick", "Anna and the King"), science fiction ("Contact"), to intelligent action films ("The Silence of the Lambs", "Panic Room"), she has acted with élan in almost every genre. In a Hollywood starved of good roles for women, Foster has found roles that have made her passionate — even if they happen to be located in B-grade films.
In her return to the screen as Meg Altman in David Fincher's "Panic Room", she has taken another unremarkable film and made it memorable. She plays an insecure single mother whose rich husband has just dumped her, and whose daughter is at a difficult, resentful age. To top it all, mother and diabetic daughter find themselves locked inside their "panic room", with armed criminals in their house. But like all victims played by Foster, Meg is a fighter. And so, as she picks up the sledgehammer, we're already cheering silently.
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