Best 143 quotes of Jodie Foster on MyQuotes

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.

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.

Actors become actors because they loved entertaining their family by putting on the lampshade and dancing around as a kid, ... That's not my personality. For me, the fun part of making movies is seeing it as a director sees it. I like the architecture of movies. I like knowing what's coming and working to set that up.

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Boys are easy. I mean, there are just a lot of bruises when they're young. With boys, you get a lot of accidental jabs in the eye and stepping on your feet, and those tantrums they cause when they don't want to leave the toy store.

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

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

Caitriona Balfe, who is Irish, is also in my movie. I asked her to play her Irish accent in the movie, but her own brogue is so faint that I had to keep pumping it up.

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

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

Cruelty might be very human and very cultural, but it is not acceptable and it is not an option.

Definitely, there's a lot of trouble you come up against when you're acting and directing, about your performance. Sometimes it's hard to be objective about it. I will tend to get two takes and walk away. I don't belabor it, and it's important to me to have someone who says, "You know what? You should get another one, and maybe you should try it like that".

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.

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.

Every movie changes you. The process of making a film changes you. You have to be obsessed, you have to get up at 3 in the morning and go "Wait, I have an idea!" You have to continually be drawn over and over again to deepening inside that story, and ruminating over questions: "Why would he say this to her? Why if he was standing there, would she go?" Every one of those answers has to come from some personal place, and in order to do that, you can't sit on the surface. It's such a big change that you can't really explain it to anyone else.

Going back and forth between the press and something like The Crucible must be really crazy and intense.

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 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.

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 aspire to be able to appreciate and review a director based on their accomplishments and based on who they are and what they bring to the material, regardless of their gender.

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

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

I did a couple of plays in junior high school, maybe high school, and then I did a play in college.

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

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

I'd like to work more as a director. It's distracting being an actor, because - there's a lot of reasons. You find out you're going to work about six months before you start shooting, and then there's prep and there's post afterward, and there's stuff to do, and then suddenly you've gone a year without directing. There's a part of me that has to not be tempted by that in order to commit more to the directing. Honestly, the big reason for me to act is to observe other directors and learn from them. That seems to be the biggest draw.

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

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.

I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.

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.

I don't know why people think child actresses in particular are screwed up. I see kids everywhere who are totally bored. I've never been bored a day in my life.

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

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.

I don't think there is anything good about fame. 'Tables in restaurants.' People say that but, then again, why don't you just call the day before? Or go eat somewhere else?

I do think it's true that anytime somebody comes to you and says, "I'd like to be in your film," it's never good to dismiss them or make fun of them, because if they're passionate and driven enough, they very well might find a way to be in your film.

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times.

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.