Jodie Foster's Other Starring Role

Jeffrey Zaslow
USA Weekend, March 3, 2002

Almost every day, Jodie Foster visits a Starbucks coffeehouse near her home in Los Angeles. As she orders coffee, she watches the people behind the counter, unable to shake this thought: She wants their job. "I think about that all the time," she says. It might be easy to dismiss her as a millionaire actress trying to show she's in touch with common working folk, but Foster isn't kidding. She pictures herself remembering every customer's order, making "the meanest cappuccinos in town" and reveling in "the repetitive tasks" the job requires.

"Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area. There's either enough foam [in the cappuccino] or there isn't. It's black and white. It's a reaction to what I do for a living, which is gray and amorphous. 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."

Of course, most of her Hollywood contemporaries had such jobs before they hit it big. They were waitresses, shoe salesmen, store clerks. But Foster, 39, has been a professional actress since she was 3. Perhaps she should have worked at McDonald's as a teen, she says: "Maybe I'd have gotten it out of my system." Few actors still working have been part of the national consciousness longer than Foster. She likens her experience to that of John F. Kennedy Jr. They both were famous before they knew what fame was. "It informs your personality," she says. An Academy Award nominee at 14 for her role as a child prostitute in "Taxi Driver" (1976), she went on to win two Best Actress Oscars in her 20s, for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs." She then tried directing -- "Little Man Tate," "Home for the Holidays" -- followed by showy parts in the sci-fi drama "Contact" and the costume epic "Anna and the King." Later this month, she stars in the thriller "Panic Room," taking the role Nicole Kidman abandoned two weeks into filming because of a recurring knee injury. Foster learned she was pregnant while making the movie.

Despite decades in the public eye, Foster remains enigmatic. She will not identify the father (or fathers) of her children -- Charles, 3, and Kit, 5 months -- or explain the specifics of their conception. Has she planned what she'll say to the boys when they ask about it? "Of course I know what I'm going to say," she replies, smiling. "But I'm not gonna share it with America." She wears a gold band on her ring finger. It looks like a wedding ring, she's told. "Yes, it does," she says, but she makes no revelations.

She understands people are curious about her sexual orientation, her efforts at single motherhood and her feelings about John Hinckley Jr., who said he shot then-president Ronald Reagan in 1981 to impress her. But she's mostly mute on those issues. Maybe her sons will need father figures, she allows, "but so far they seem extremely content and well-adjusted. I have a big family and lots of [male] friends. I'm trying to do the best I can." It would be unfair to the boys, she says, if she talked too much about them publicly. "Someday, somebody can ask them directly about their lives, and they'll have something to say. ... You're welcome to call them up when they're 18."

Foster has an easy smile, a small face, chic glasses and a no-nonsense attitude that she says may be her most salient feature. "Ask me something. I don't have a problem being blunt," she says.

Did she like the "Silence of the Lambs" sequel, "Hannibal"? (After she declined to reprise the role of Clarice, it was played by Julianne Moore.) "I did see it, but I can't talk about it," says Foster, meaning she won't talk about it. "It kind of came and went. It wasn't like a big event." Are the reports true that she dropped out of the thriller "The Game" because Michael Douglas wanted her to play his sister and she thought she should play his daughter? (At the time, he was 52 and she was 34.) The media quoted Douglas as saying he'd looked in the mirror and Foster needed to do the same. Reportedly, she was paid millions not to be in the film. "That was a long, involved thing that I'm not allowed to talk about because there was a lawsuit," she says.

She's more forthcoming when discussing her childhood. Born Alicia Christian Foster, she got her start in a Coppertone commercial at 3, which led to roles in TV series such as "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" and a series based on the movie "Paper Moon." Her father left the family before she was born, and she was raised by a mother who, as a former Hollywood publicist, had the instincts to be an effective stage mom.

Foster traces her current need for "meticulous" housekeeping (she says she squeegees her shower after every use) to her upbringing. She had to keep her room orderly and her home and work lives separate. "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."

She felt very mature as a child -- she enjoyed staying in hotels, traveling the world -- but now, looking back, she sees herself then as immature. "I spent a lot of time not in school, so I didn't have deep relationships with kids my own age. I didn't learn social skills. And you can get away with things with grownups that kids won't let you get away with, like being flaky."

In 1997, her older brother, Buddy, who had a less successful career as a child actor (his biggest role was on "Mayberry R.F.D."), wrote a book about growing up with Jodie. In "Foster Child," he spoke of his affection for his sister and respect for her talent, but he included allegations that their mother misspent their childhood earnings, had a violent temper and nicknamed Jodie after a lesbian lover the kids called "Aunt Jo."

When the book came out, Foster issued a statement calling it "a cheap cry for attention and money." She hasn't seen her brother since. "I saw very little of him in my life," she says. "He moved out of the house when he was about 14." Buddy, who owns a construction firm in Minnesota, says he showed his sister the book in advance, and she made corrections, toning it down in places. He now believes her unhappiness after the book's release was rooted in her loyalty to their mother, who was mortified that he'd revealed family secrets. He says he meant the book as an inspirational look at how his sister "turned obstacles into opportunities." He's certain they'll reconcile someday. "Jodie and I have a spiritual connection," he says.

Foster recognizes that many of her movies have what she calls an "abandoned-by-your-father" theme. She cautions against reading too much into it. "You find that in a lot of women's literature," she says.

But her role choices are no coincidence, says "Panic Room" director David Fincher: "She grew up playing the daughter of single mothers, and now she plays single mothers." In "Panic Room" she's a divorced mother of a 10-year-old girl (played by Kristen Stewart). They're trapped in a hidden chamber of a New York brownstone during a brutal home invasion. Foster, who had to hold Stewart's hand in many scenes, remained sensitive to the girl's trepidation when the cameras were off, Fincher says: "Having been there herself as a kid, she knew how to disarm the anxiety of a child actor. She was very nurturing."

When Kidman left the production, the part was rewritten for Foster. "The character had been more helpless," Fincher says. "Jodie is so capable and fiercely intelligent, she can play anything but helpless." Still, the director senses Foster's urge to blend into a crowd, to work in a coffeehouse. "She longs for anonymity more than any famous person I've ever seen," he says. In selecting roles, "Jodie wants to play the people on the side, the ones you wouldn't have made the movie about," says Meg LeFauve, her friend and producing partner. "She relates to the people who don't normally get to stand in the spotlight."

Foster remains busy with projects. She hopes to make a biopic about Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favorite filmmaker. And she still plans to direct "Flora Plum," a Depression-era story about circus performers. But she calls motherhood "the most creative thing I've ever done. It taps into a whole other side of you. You have to think about everything you say and do, for the kids' sake." She says her older son is a "great kid, but he's a little lazy. He actually asked me the other day, 'Would you turn the wheel on my fire engine? It's kind of hard.' I said, 'I'm not going to play with your toys for you. Turn the wheel yourself!' "

If her boys ever want to act professionally, will she encourage them? She grins at the question. "I'd tell them to go to Starbucks first and don't pass go."

Inset:

Will she get the job? In our interview, Foster reveals her two fantasy occupations: coffee clerk and letter carrier.

"We'd love to have her" That's the word from Starbucks Corp. chairman Howard Schultz upon learning that the actress daydreams about working at one of his company's 5,175 coffeehouses. Some now have drive-through windows, and Foster says that would be a good spot for her: "I could breathe the fresh air while I worked." Because she'd like an outdoor job, the company says it would consider her as a driver of its "Chill Patrol," a van that cruises neighborhoods distributing frozen Frappuccino samples. Schultz says he'll personally conduct a job interview with Foster if she'd like.

"We'd be happy to talk to her" She also might enjoy working as a letter carrier: "I like the idea of working outside, wearing shorts, wearing a uniform, knowing your community and the 10 streets where you deliver. I like doing a task well." On a break between movies, Foster could sign on as a temporary letter carrier, suggests U.S. Postal Service spokesman George Marsh. "We'd be happy to talk to her, but she'd have to go through the same procedures as everyone else -- an exam, a background check and a drug screening." The pay: $11 to $13 an hour. Such a temp job might be "healing," Foster says. "I'd like to be a letter carrier for three months, then go back to acting. I should do it, shouldn't I?"