LOS ANGELES -- Jodie Foster has two young sons, but she was surprised by the way her maternal instincts kicked into overdrive during the making of Panic Room.

In the thriller, opening March 29, Foster and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) are trapped in their ''panic room'' during a burglary. The room is a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of a break-in.

''I always knew intellectually that I would do anything for my children,'' Foster said at Monday night's premiere. ''You do experience something that is much different when you have kids. It's not so much the sense that 'I would do anything.' That you know. It's the 'I will feel everything as much as they will, if not more than they will.' ''

Maybe it's also because she and Kristen, 11, bear an uncanny resemblance to each other. ''I can really, really relate to her,'' Stewart said. ''We look so much alike.''

During filming, former child star Foster mothered her on-screen daughter. She was pregnant at the time with her second son, Kit, born last September. (Son Charles turns 4 in July.)

''She knows how it was when she was a kid,'' said Kristen, a Foster fan since she was 5 who counts The Silence of the Lambs among her favorite films. ''There were times when she went to David (Fincher, the director) and said, 'Oh, this take is kind of hard. Don't wear her out.' She was awesome.''

Perhaps someone should have looked after Dwight Yoakam. The country singer, Jared Leto and Forest Whitaker play burglars in the movie. The movie gets physical at times as Foster leaves the panic room to try to protect herself and her daughter.

''I got a little bashed up, but thanks to David it was well worth it,'' said Yoakam, who came with girlfriend Bridget Fonda. ''I burst a bursa sac on my elbow and cracked ribs and (suffered) hyper-extended thumbs.''

''Every single day, something happened to Dwight,'' Foster said. ''He is an accident waiting to happen.''

Foster has begun work on the animated movie Tusker, which is still in its early stages and has no release date scheduled. Although she tends to do a picture only every few years, she said she's always ready to work if there's a good movie. ''If you hear of anything, just call me up,'' she said.

Brad Pitt, who appeared in Fincher's Fight Club and Seven, also attended the premiere. Wearing a full beard for Darren Aronofsky's untitled sci-fi thriller, the actor came without wife Jennifer Aniston, who was doing a magazine photo shoot.

Jodie Talks, a Bit

JODIE FOSTER is notorious for her independent lifestyle. She's also one of the toughest interviews to land. But Sean M. Smith has talked with Jodie for Premiere's March issue, and Jodie speaks out with a will.

Of the criticism she received for refusing to replay the Clarice Starling role in the "Hannibal" sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," she says, "It's hard to come up with a character that would be Clarice 10 years later. The book was clear about who she had become, but I'm not sure I agreed with it." (Are you listening, author Tom Harris?) Jodie will soon appear in a new role in David Fincher's suspenseful thriller "The Panic Room."

Living by her own set of rules has been Jodie's answer to the fame that has spanned much of her life. Because she doesn't talk about everything in her life to the press doesn't mean she is closed off. "It doesn't mean that I'm not an open person." A former co-star, Mel Gibson, concurs, offering positive remarks about his good and talented friend.

Jodie's best quote concerns how she lives with her two little sons.

"Some actors pay for someone to pick up their mail and walk their dog and pick up the kids from school. But that's your life. So you're paying someone else to live your life so you can work more? I'd rather pay somebody to work for me."

Jodie Foster: Second to Nun

PARK CITY, Utah — There are a few things the normally loquacious Jodie Foster doesn't like to talk about — her private life and Hannibal, for starters.

She was friendly and polite but made it clear she was at the Sundance Film Festival — which ended yesterday — to talk about The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, a pet project she produced and stars in - as a one-legged motorcycle-riding nun.

Most know better than to ask this intensely private single mom about the paternity of her two sons, Charles, 3, and Kit, 4 months.

But Foster won't even say whether she's seen Hannibal, in which Julianne Moore took over Foster's Oscar-winning role as FBI agent Clarice Starling from "The Silence of the Lambs."

"I won't talk about that," she said firmly.

The Yale University grad turned down a $10 million paycheck for Hannibal, reportedly because she had reservations about the ultra-grisly script - prompting its producer, Dino De Laurentiis, to offer this nasty assessment of Foster's sex appeal:

"As an audience . . . I see Julianne Moore, and I want to go to bed with her. I see Jodie Foster, and no way."

Foster may not want to talk about that, but she did deny recent reports that her long-planned biography of notorious Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who turns 100 this year, will go before the cameras later this year.

And she did talk briefly talk about her son, Kit, who was born in September while she was shooting the thriller The Panic Room, due out in March. In it she plays a woman hiding from intruders with her young daughter in a Manhattan brownstone.

"Two kids are a handful, and so was that movie," the diminutive 39-year-old actress said with a laugh.

"I managed to get pregnant, be pregnant, give birth and still not be finished with that movie. . . . But I'm really, really happy with the way it turned out."

Her other baby — the reason she returned to Sundance for the first time since she was a juror in the '80s — was a more difficult delivery.

Through her Egg Pictures, Foster produced The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, in which she plays a nun who works with troubled adolescents at a Georgia parochial school.

Altar Boys was set to premiere at last year's Sundance festival. It was pulled at the last minute because of delays in completing complex and striking animated sequences devised by Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn.

The film was later offered for a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which passed on it.

Some saw it as a deliberate snub of Foster, who had just dropped out as head of the Cannes jury to replace Nicole Kidman in The Panic Room.

"I was the one person who never believed that," she said, with a chuckle, of the supposed slight.

"But I believe all things happen for a reason, and once Cannes didn't happen, we realized Sundance was the right place to premiere. And the organizers there were great about inviting us again."

Foster, who's been acting since childhood, praised the three teenage stars of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys — Emile Hirsch, Kieran Culkin (Macaulay's brother) and Jena Malone.

"It was such a funny experience for me, having been a child and teenage actor, to watch these kids working with a script that was so true and real to their experiences.

"When I was their age, the only films I did that spoke to my actual life were Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Foxes.

"Mostly, people asked me to be cute and smile a lot."

Women Filmmakers Star at Sundance

excerpts from a Reuters.com article
January 19, 2002 01:34 PM ET

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) - Women have stolen the show at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival this week.

Of the more than 170 films presented at the biggest U.S. gathering for American and international independent cinema, 94 were made, produced, written by or starred women, including one named Harry who sports a goatee.

Now if only the Hollywood studios would take notice.

"The powers that be, when it comes time to invest $4 million or $5 million, which is a lot of money with someone they don't know, their first instinct is to go with someone who looks like them," said actress Jodie Foster, whose new movie, "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys," a drama she produced, premiered here on Friday.

"Basically blacks, Hispanics, women get edged out."

By Marcus Errico
Oct 2, 2001, 1:15 PM PT
EOnline! News article

From now on, when Jodie Foster refers to her two golden guys, we can no longer assume she means her pair of Oscars.

That's because the 38-year-old actress-director-producer gave birth Saturday to son number two, publicist Pat Kingsley confirmed today.

Here are the vital statistics. The baby's name is Kit Foster. Like big brother Charles, Kit was born in Los Angeles. He weighed in at 6 pounds, 3 ounces.

While the delivery came about a month earlier than Foster had planned, "there is no reason to raise any red flags--everything was normal," Kingsley says. "Both [Foster and child] are at home and fine."

As with Charles, who turned three in July, mom is mum on the paternity of the newborn. When asked in April by New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith whether "her donor" was the same man as Charles' father, the fiercely private Foster replied, "I'm not going to answer that."

That echoed Foster's hard-line no-comment stance when she announced she was pregnant with Charlie in 1998. "I'm not going to discuss the father, the method or anything of that nature," she told Smith at the time. Since then, while tabloids and gossip columns have speculated on likely father candidates, Foster has stuck to her promise.

She says she plans to raise her kids as single mother. "Just like I was raised myself," she told Smith.

Before taking a break to handle her impending mommyhood, Foster, who picked up Best Actress Oscars for 1988's The Accused and 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, wrapped the Columbia Pictures' thriller The Panic Room. She also produced and starred in the indie flick The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. Both films are slated to be released next year.

News Archive: March 2001-August 2001