Best 143 quotes of Jodie Foster on MyQuotes

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.

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

If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

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?

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.

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.

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 like dramas. I've always liked dramas. And I'm a pretty light person. I don't consider myself a very dramatic person. But I do like doing that onscreen.

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.

I like to nap. I do like to sleep. Sometimes I sleep in between takes.

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.

I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.

I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it.

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

I made, like, five movies while I was in college. I think they just weren't memorable movies. I've taken breaks as the years have gone on - I burn out every once in a while.

I make dark dramas, movies about people living in desperate fear who then overcome that fear and find a heroic side to themselves.

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'm an atheist. But 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. They love it, and when they say, 'Are we Jewish?' or 'Are we Catholic?' I say, 'Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?'

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

I'm kind of a chatterbox and I talk really fast.

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.

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!

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

I really did feel like I was surrounded by family members. I didn't have a dad, and I remember there were all these guys - in the old days, there were no women, except a makeup artist or, occasionally, a script supervisor. So there were just guys who taught me how to, you know, whittle wood, or how to pull focus, and what the camera was doing. And if I was being bratty, they'd sit me down and tell me. There were lots of rules about not being late and making sure that you didn't spill anything. So it felt a little bit like I was in a family.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

I spent a lot of time not in school, so I didn't have deep relationships with kids my own age.

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

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

I think Anna and the King is a look at Asia from the Asian perspective, reflecting the Asian experience, which is very rare.

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.

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

I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me.

I think it's important that when people are struggling, that you not run away from them if you love them. Kristen, I mean, I look at the room tonight, you know, Kristen Stewart and Claire Danes, Jennifer Lawrence, all these young women that I worked with who basically were child actors like I was a child actor. And then I feel very protective of them, because even though I think I have managed to get through the process relatively sanely, I have my scars, and I hope to be in some ways a member of their family that's out there protecting them.

I think there is something to being curious about your choices, but not wanting to kind of pierce the bubble of them, because it takes away from the act of discovering.

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.

It's a skill that people are born with. Either you're a focuser or you're a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

It's a tough trick to be able to create an intelligent movie that has socio-political commentary, and also has the emotional and moving stuff, at the same time.

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

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.

It's very important to distinguish between chemical depression that requires medication and talk therapy.

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.

~I used to think, What if there's an interesting movie and it conflicts with the boys going to a new school for the first time?... Well, I didn't anticipate that was going to be about a two-second dilemma. I didn't know the choices would be so easy to make.~

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

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

I want to be inspiring to myself, to my kids, my family, and my friends.

I was a literature major in college and that was my thing, books.

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 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 was raised with a single mom and we had a very specific, very particular relationship. She worked with me and my job. I was almost three and we traveled everywhere together and she was really in my life in a really profound way. The most significant relationship of my life. It was beautiful and also an incredible, difficult struggle. I know how creative that life is, and how difficult it is to figure it out.