Extended interview: Jodie Foster reflects on her career, motherhood and more

[Music] welcome I'm Tracy Smith and this is Here Comes the Sun a closer look at some of the people places and things we bring you every weekend on Sunday morning aist jod Foster has been acting since the age of three urged on by her mother who was also her early manager the two-time Oscar winner spoke with Lee Cowan about the longevity of her career and choices made along the way you were kind of forced into it I guess isn't really the right word but you didn't choose it no I didn't I didn't choose it but at some point you chose to kept doing it yes I knew that um that there was sort of an unsaid thing that you know you accept these parameters or you can always stop you can always say no that was always an option it was always an option but it's a little bit of like you know here you can have this dog food who you can starve later in the show jod Foster on her role as a mother amazing amazing part of my life um that is so interwoven with everything that I am being a mom um and now my boys are 25 and 22 um you know we've evolved into this this great relationship that is yes I'm a mom to them but I'm also their friend I learned so much from them and I'm so proud of them and and and we have a great time together then it's been said art is everywhere but what about the bottom of a dirty whiskey glass David po introduces us to an artist finding inspiration in a very unusual place so tell me about the color the the whiskey didn't look like that it did not I put different colored lights different colored gels in from behind so that's what's giving the the purple and the blues and the the orange and before you do that what would it look like it would look relatively whitish gray so yeah nature is giving me the pattern I'm giving it the life that's all coming up right here on here comes the sun Jody Foster is back in a big way after spending much of the last decade on smaller roles and focusing on her marriage and raising two sons she stars in HBO's True Detective portraying a determined police chief and Netflix's niad as long distance swimmer Diane nyad's Coach Lee Cowen caught up with her in her hometown Los Angeles I had my time and it's not my time necessarily anymore it's my time to support other people and I have something to contribute because I have experience and I have wisdom but I don't have to play the same role that I played when I was in my 20s that is the wisdom that actor jod Foster found when she entered into her 60s a kind of professional Epiphany that she blames on mother nature I think it might be a chemical thing that happens to you when you're older where you just kind of relax that's really saying something since she started her career at the age of three you don't have to worry about me just take good care of yourself don't catch any cold or anything with nearly 100 credits to her name and two Oscars she says she's always had a frustrating on again off again love affair with acting sometimes I go through years where I just don't want to act for a while I don't find anything I'll read a perfect good script about a perfectly good thing that I should be interested in and I just don't care for most of the last decade Foster was focused on her marriage to Alexandra Hedison and raising her two teenage boys but then two roles came around that have her now back in front of the camera again some people come to Alaska to escape get away from something you don't even think of me and she says she's prder of them almost anything she's done if you die I want to be the last person you see don't I but if you do I'll be right there with you she's already earned Golden Globe and critic's choice nominations for her role in the Netflix original there's no one more NAD than you niyad where she plays Bonnie stole friend and Coach to swimmer Diana niyad played by aned Benny what were you thinking you pathetic hey hey hey no no no no no stupid stupid none of that none of that don't beat yourself up you're doing great I think it was much more challenging for net I spent a lot of time on the side of the boat sucking in my stomach that's pretty much what I did in my jogger bra I'm not working with you again ever you think I want to work with you I do actually yeah then after a 5-year wait there's the highly anticipated fourth season of HBO's True Detective my job is to keep everyone safe night com Tre is just as spooky and Supernatural as the first True Detective but this time it's set in The Frigid polar winter nights Alaska was it as cold as it looked up there when you were shooting it was probably colder than it looked um there are moments where it's really hard to speak uh it's so cold that your mouth kind of talks like that stop around hey this is a crime scene aren't you pretending like you know what you're doing foster plays to detective Liz daners who's confronting a certain darkness of her own Oh no you're not going to blame her on me and I wasn't even here you know who was here you I didn't think that I would come back at this level or I didn't think that I would come back to acting as often as I have now many thought acting was just her Destiny after all Hollywood has always been home every La kid loves growing up in La true that's their reference did I loved it she lived with her mom and three siblings just a mile from what was then a very gritty Walk of Fame you were talking about Hollywood Boulevard yeah and how very different than it is now yes we weren't allowed to go there she said that if we she ever found us on Hollywood Boulevard that we shouldn't come home Foster's mom Brandy Foster got her into acting and as her early manager kept her in it she says in a gentle but firm way she's asked me about thousand times you know do you want to be an actress I could have always said no but I don't it's fine you said you were kind of forced into it I guess isn't really the right word but you didn't choose it no I didn't I didn't choose it but at some point you chose to kept doing it keep yes I knew that um that there was sort of an unsaid thing that you know you accept these parameters or you can always stop you can always say no that was always an option it was always an option but it's a little bit of like you know here you can have this dog food or you can starve you know there there a little of that despite being the youngest child there was always a maturity about her an old soul in a young frame and this is me born in Mount Hospital 13 years ago give or take a month female blonde natural of course I'm like such an awkward adolescent in Freaky Friday like lots of pimples and kind of chubby and greasy hair and all that gross I wish I could switch places with her for just one day she proved she could convince ly play characters wise Beyond her age even her own mother well those are kind of my home movies what's your name easy well that's not any kind of name that's easy to remember yeah but what's your real name I don't like my real name she was already a veteran actor at the tender age of 12 when she was cast as an underage prostitute in Taxi Driver what do you want me you go back to my parents I mean they hate me why do you think I split in the first place there ain't nothing there I didn't really understand what building a character was until I did tax driver her if there was an ambivalence about her career she says it was rarely about the work it was about the celebrity that came with it you said that you were you've said it a bunch of times actually I think that you're an introvert in an extroverts job is that still the case you definitely true yeah I 100% an introvert never been okay with being a public figure it's not something that's ever felt okay to me or felt um healthy she was in college at Yale when an obsessed fan John hinley Jr said he attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan to get Foster's attention last fall I received several pieces of unsolicited correspondence signed John W hinley or jwh and I threw them all away she was dragged into history through no fault of a Rome Foster then endured years of speculation about her private life about her sons about her sexuality all of which she kept from the tablets much to their dism I tried to be as authentic as I possibly could and I had to protect my own psyche from the publicness I just had to figure out how to dig a trench around me and to survive intact and some of that meant being more isolated is that trench still there oh yeah definitely um yeah definitely I mean I I'm working on it I'm working on it and the roles she's generally taken she says seem to be characters who also have something to work on what did you see Clarice what did you see L they were screaming there's always been an intensity or a vulnerability that have marked so many of her roles I thought I thought if I could save just one but he was so heavy so heavy County Sheriff when she played a rape Survivor in the accused she made us all uncomfortable and rightly so I have not seen the accused in I don't know 25 years I don't think I wanted to revisit it actually and he pushed me down on the pinball machine and he ripped my shirt he lifted my skirt I pulled down my Underpants really really hard I can only do one thing at once I'm not a multitasker so I'm a focuser and if you're a focuser you do you do get obsessed with things I think every movie I make I get obsessed with swim no swim you are Force know that sh out there whether she's pretending to be in the Florida Straits or straight out frozen in the Arctic Circle those men died before they froze what the get out of here now at 61 jod Foster now says she's reached a point of acknowledgement in her life yes she's a little obsessed and yes she's an introvert and yes yes yes I am crazy but for one of the first times in her long professional life Jody Foster is finally feeling a little more free I think I have managed to survive and survive intact and um that was no small feet and look at me I survived up next an exclusive excerpt from Lee cowen's chat with jod Foster something you can only see right here on here comes the sun stay with us now I can really sit back and sit in my chair and go like this is good wow I really this is pretty damn good as promised here's more from Lee Cowan and jod Foster when you were doing all the all the directing like you said in your 50s were you you weren't really that interested in acting but was there a part of you that worried if you didn't get back into it you might not ever get back into it no I kind of anticipated that's what would happen um because my mom had told me like you know you leave for it'll all be done uh I assume that's what would happen I didn't assume that I um I mean I kind of would say like I'm really looking to working in working in my 70s and 80s because I I want to be that person who plays like junky grandma or um who's all like twisted up and messed up and um that's something that I look forward to I love directing I love it uh it's you know it's intense and it takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of time away from your family and from people you love you know it's it's 2 three years sometimes longer yeah so you have to love what you're going to do and it has to because I make personal films no matter even if it was a genre movie it's going to be a personal film um I kind of have to download all of my stuff onto it and that takes time uh but I think it's worth it because you have this personal connection even if it's something you didn't write or you're actually in just you still need to yeah yeah um I think that that that work that you do with the writer is so creative it's the most creative thing that you do um when you're shooting film uh it allows you to understand the minutia of every character's journey and I can't make a decision or a choice you know put the C do I put the camera here or there or do I use this lens or should the person be wearing green or blue I can't make any of those decisions or those choices until I've investigated it and have understood the characters entirely so it's uh it's a big commitment so what do you like about sort of nurturing young people coming up I like making them laugh um I I've really now come to understand that um that's the best way to direct me is is to direct for humor and to be brutally honest and blunt and um to just feel the joy of that you know the joy of humor so uh I I bring that to the darkest stories and hopefully my co-stars like that and if I feel like oh uh oh I should not bring the humor today then I just you know take it off to the side it feels like talking about these two uh both NAD and and True Detective that decades ago um a story about two gay Partners or story about um a mom with a with a gay daughter would have raised some some eyebrows and now it it really doesn't anymore so we've come a long way at least I think it doesn't raise eyebrows anymore but maybe yeah I'm wrong but well we're living in a different time and a time that's much more conscious and my time was much more conscious than my parents you know than my family I mean hopefully we're moving progressively forward and becoming more open and more free that's what we hope um I guess we'll see as time goes on whether there's a contraction or a narrowing of that freedom but um yeah uh I'm proud I think that our culture has evolved so much and I I do carry like all of us I think we carry the the luggage of um of how we were raised in the past um and our our kids don't have to anymore you know that's nice when it comes to uh being a mom how how great a chapter has that been amazing amazing part of my life um that is so interwoven with everything that I am being a mom um and now my boys are 25 and 22 um you know we've evolved into this this great relationship that is yes I'm a mom to them but I'm also their friend I learned so much from them and I'm so proud of them and and and we have a great time together we really have fun together is there anything that you you get out of work now that maybe you didn't 10 or 20 years ago there's so many things I appreciate now about work that I I don't know maybe it was just a different time or I was too busy or I was too filled with anxiety or I was too ambitious orti going and now I can really sit back and sit in my chair and go like this is good wow I really this is is pretty damn good so what's next what's next oh my gosh I have no idea what's next how about that no idea um I'm hoping to direct next i' I've been working on something for a while that I'm hoping to do a lmited series next but you never know you never know you never know what's going to happen up next finding art at the bottom of the [Music] glass welcome back art may be in the eye of the beholder but photographer Ernie button has found it in dirty dishes of all places here's David po at this photography exhibit in Las Vegas you might not know right away what you're looking at I would think this one would be like a cross-section of tree I'd say in this one I see something maybe a moon effect or Planet but in fact these are photos of evaporated whiskey crud so the title of the project is Vanishing Spirits the dried remains of single malt scotch after you've taken that last drop or that last sip of whiskey the residue dries in the bottom of the glass and leaves me these wonderful patterns Ernie button's day job is Speech Pathology but his hobbies include photography and drinking Scotch whiskey in the evening that's how this whole thing began in 200 8 and when I went to collect the glasses in the morning I noticed this film in the bottom of the glass and when I held it up to the light I saw these fine repetitive patterns in the bottom of the glass I'm like I can try and do something with this is it tell me about the color that the whiskey didn't look like that it did not I put different colored lights different colored gels in from behind so that's what's giving the the purple and the blues and the the orange and before you do that what would it look like it would look relatively whitish gray so yeah nature is giving me the pattern I'm giving it the life these days he experiments with different kinds of drinking glasses sheets of glass and whiskies from different parts of the world have you ever tried chocolate milk have you ever tried seven up you know I've tried a lot of different um alcohols I found that they have to be aged in a cask so they have to be in a wooden Cask you know taking in you know all the or organic material from the wood into that spirit that was put in there tequila that will work U that will give me some interesting images uh vodka won't I mean you have an area of knowledge that probably nobody in the world has yeah not sure what to do with it but in fact he's done plenty with it his whiskey photos have been featured in The New York Times and in National Geographic they inspired a published scientific paper and they're published in a coffeee table art book is there a takeaway is there a lesson the ignored or the overlooked can have relevance can have interest if you don't look around if you don't pay attention to the really small things in life you could miss out on something really [Music] big I'm Tracy Smith thanks for joining us we'll see you here next time on Here Comes the [Music] Sun

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 96,033

Keywords: here comes the sun, Jodie Foster, Lee Cowan, David Pogue, Las Vegas, Ernie Button

Id: egpeRBh9QJA

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024