Jodie Foster Quotes

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.

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.

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 think anybody over 30 plays parents because it happens in your thirties and so that's kind of a natural progression. But I'm definitely drawn to it. It's probably the most intense, passionate thing that happens to you as you get older.

Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.

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

All the movies that I make in some ways have to be the story of my life. There are different chapters in my life.

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

When I go into the stores, I pet the saddles. Until security comes and takes me away.

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.

There are lots of futurists that spend their whole life trying to figure out who we're going to be in 40, 50, 60, 100 years. That's the great thing about science fiction.

I don't know if you've ever seen some of the Sidney Lumet movies, like Dog Day Afternoon [1975] or Network [1976]. They're real events that happen in real time, and there are all of these different characters experiencing the same thing in different parts of the movie ... I am so bad at explaining my films. But it's in the world of finance and the world of media, and how they connect. It was a big undertaking. A big, mainstream movie, which stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney. But for me, it's really just a small story about character and people.

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 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.

This is the place where I learned to live this life, to curse this life, and to claim this life for my very own.

I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous.

I cannot believe in God when there is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being and creator.

I've only been to Dublin once, and I had a great time. I got completely soaked because it was rainy.

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.

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.

When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors ... Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.

I wish people could get over the hang-up of subtitles, although at the same time, you know, that's kind of why I'm kind of pro dubbing.

I've worked with Neil Jordan, who I really adore. We did The Brave One [2007] together.

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

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 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.

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

I don't really think I have the personality. I am not very external. I don't want to dance on the table and do impressions. So I think that the way I approach it is really loving story. That's my first love - the words. The words and the story and how to create images. I guess I come at that as a director. I think that's much more in my personality to be a director, so that's kind of informed my acting.

All of the thinking and planning that you do to get there, and then, in one minute, in one second, it just doesn't matter. It goes out the window. You either got it or you didn't. There is something kind of refreshing about that.

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

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.

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

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

There is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God ...

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

If you had been a public figure from the time you were a toddler, if you'd had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, than maybe to you might value privacy above all else. I have given everything up there from the time that I was three-years old. That's reality show enough, don't you think?

In the end, winning is sleeping better.

Now, apparently, Im told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime-time reality show.

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.

How could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.

I suppose that's my one little secret, the secret of my success.

But now I really don't want to work unless I really, really care about a project.

It was a weird moment in my life and a weird experience [doing a theater]. It made me think, "Gee, I don't know if I ever want to do this again." And I love theater. I love going. I love the experience of theater. But I am not sure it's for me.

It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.

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.

We think, "If I have more money, I am more valuable. If I make more money, I am more valuable." It's all sort of wound up with this problem that humans have with their failure.

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.

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.

As time goes on, I will play characters who get older: I don't want to be some Botoxed weirdo.

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.

I didn't grow up really wanting to be an actor. I don't remember ever not being an actor.

Interestingly, when you do films, sometimes you have conscious reasons, things that you were looking for, or stuff that you were trying to do. And then, you see the film and you think, "Wow, it ended up being something totally different!"

So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.

I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.

I love the way L A. leaves you alone. I can go home, read all day, and nobody bugs me.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago in the stone age

Books have always been my escape - where I go to bury my nose, hone my senses, or play the emotional tourist in a world of my own choosing... Words are my best expressive tool, my favorite shield, my point of entry...When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter. If I could choose my favorite day, my favorite moment in some perfect dreamscape, I know exactly where I would be: stretched out in bed in the afternoon, knowing that the kids are taking a nap and I've got two more chapters left of some heartbreaking novel, the kind that messes you up for a week.

I'd like to be Dakota Fanning when I get young.

Being an artist is a way of saying, I am here, and this is what I stand for.

My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.

I was one of those avid moviegoers as a kid, and we didn't have video, so we went to see everything five times. I went to see every foreign film playing in my town. As times went on, I watched a lot less films. I have a different film school now. My film school now is my life experience.

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.

Acting just happens to be my skill, but I think I would probably be just as happy being a technician or entering into the film business in some other way.

Being twenty-something is all about taking it in: eating it, drinking it, and spitting out the seeds later. It's about being fearless, and stupid, and dangerous, and unfocused, and abandoned. It's about being in it, not on top of it

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.

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.

Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone's privacy, to destroy someone's sense of self.

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

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.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies.

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.

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.

What I didn't realize is how completely consumed I would be by my sons. I didn't know that the rest of my life would become so little a priority.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Sometimes, you really don't understand why something is important to you until you get halfway through the movie - or maybe even all the way through.

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

I'm really not a clothes person. To me, that's just work. It's the thing I hate to do the most. I don't want to be judged in that way.

I don't need to be Tom Cruise. I just need to work forever.

I don't find acting and directing schizophrenic in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.

I can't imagine ever not doing [acting]. I would feel like I would have lost a limb. But I am older now, and sometimes I wonder who I would have been and what about me would have changed had I not had these experiences as a young person

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 also feel like I've learned over the years what is not important, and that is also great: to know what is pointless to spend your energy on, to be more specific.

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.

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.

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.

I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.

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.