Jodie Foster was on campus yesterday and killed it

Jodie Foster is an American legend. Part actress, producer and director and full time awesome woman. She began her career as a child model at age three and grew up in the industry won her first Academy Award nomination for her role in Taxi Driver in 1976. She is arguably most famous for her role in The Silence of the Lambs, and if you haven’t watched it, have you really lived?

She’s currently working on her directorial project Money Monster, which is kind of like The Big Short with a cast including Julia Roberts and George Clooney. It will premier with month in Cannes Film Festival and be in cinemas from May. This project is a under her production company. The film critiques Wall Street’s financial greed, and is very different from the projects that Foster usually is in involved in.

When asked what draws her to a script, she said that she looks for one where she can see elements of her personal life in order for her to fully invest her life into the project. Although Money Monster is a genre film, it does resonate with her personal life and ours. The exploration of virtual intimacy and how we can be closer to someone on a screen than someone physically closer to  us. As well as the fast paced cyber world that we are now so accustomed to.

She talked about the difference between directing features and TV shows as she directed episodes of House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black.

“For film, every decision is meaningful and TV is more about character and behavior. As a director of a feature, you are executing your vision, whilst in television you are following the vision of others.” For her own personal director style, she doesn’t want to try to be like any one else. Instead she focusses on the narrative. She credits her success as a director to all the directors she was lucky to work with as an actor throughout her career.

Foster went to Yale where she studied literature. She never went to film school, and kind of regrets missing out on the experience of running around with film cameras and experimenting. Nevertheless, she said film school isn’t necessary to be in the business and instead the best cheap film school is to go watch movies and talk about what you would have done differently or changed about the film. In this way, you are rewriting the script in your own image. Going to Yale changed her relationship with acting because she was able to develop other identities. Prior to Yale, the only identity she held to was her identity as an actor.

Because her career has spanned almost four decades she has had the experience of seeing technology in the industry change and adapt as well. You can try so much more now with the camera and new technologies, but you have so much more to be prepared for. “In the old days, you had to imagine what everything would look like. There was an emphasis on remembering and imagining things in your mind.”

When asked if she would ever make a virtual reality film she responded, “Why not? I want to be relevant!” In addition to the change in technology, she has witnessed changing demographics in the industry. There were very few women in film [behind the scenes] 20 years ago, and in the past fve years there has been so much change and development.

However, there are still so few female directors, which she attributes to gender psychology. She also mentioned the lack of representation for other marginalized identities and said that we have the obligation to look deeper and be better. We need to create more meaningful film while still being entertaining.