JODIE Foster talks about making The Brave One, some of its implications and why the movie means such a lot to her, especially in light of its comparisons to Taxi Driver, one of her early films.

She also talks about her career, upcoming projects and why she feels drawn towards playing a particular kind of woman in her roles.

How do you feel after a movie like this?
It’s a movie that I really am invested in and spent a lot of time on the script and getting it to this point. It was such a satisfying opportunity. I love Neil Jordan. He’s so talented and I learned so much from him. It was a great experience but it was also terribly lonely. Sometimes with dramas that’s the way it is. And part of what I am attracted to in dramas is that you have this big thing that happens to you and it’s very hard to explain to anybody. And you don’t even want to – you don’t want to explain it to anyone. And then you get to this part when the movie is done and then you have to explain it. I like talking about it but it is strangely emotional.

Are you similar to Erica in any way?
There are some things that are similar. She’s an intellectual. She’s somebody who thinks about life and thinks about the world and is in some ways quite philosophical. She’s not just an unconscious beast. So, I think that’s similar to me. And I do tend to choose roles that are the solitary journeys, somebody who has this path on their own and they have lost their husband or don’t have parents. I don’t usually play characters who are the ‘sister of’ or the ‘mother of’ or the ‘wife of,’ I’m usually the central person, and I think that’s a part of me, too — that my creative spirit is quite solitary. But other than that, I don’t know.

How far would Jodie go to stand up for herself?
You don’t know, do you? I’m not a particularly brave person. I am in my work but I don’t know that I am in my life. I don’t know if I am really brave. I have no temper. I don’t get mad. If I’m mad, I get really articulate. I’m very good at telling somebody off, like suddenly I find these words in every language. Sometimes I have dreams, I have these dreams in French and it’s always in French. And I get out of the cab and the cab driver has done something bad or whatever and I start telling him off. Like really articulate!

Does having children make you more fearful?
Yes, it makes me more worried about everything – just about their well being in general, their psychological well being. It certainly makes you question morality more, definitely.

How do you prepare to play a role for a character that is a victim of crime?
I looked a lot at post-traumatic stress syndrome. I read a lot about that, but I think that [Erica] is very different. She’s the character that didn’t get help. She needed to get help and she didn’t get help. I walked a lot – like crazy, crazy amounts of walking, like thousands of miles everywhere in Manhattan. Some of it was being completely isolated and headphones. No. I don’t know if you have ever done long hikes when you go for like six, or seven, or eight hours and you know the first two hours you talk to the person in front of you or whatever, and then it changes as time goes on. It’s kind of a meditational experience.

Anyway, so that was important, but also the radio stuff. She says specifically: “I’m not a face, and I’m not a body. I’m a voice.” And that’s why we know that there’s something wrong with her before the film starts. Not just after the crime, but before the film starts there’s a part of her that’s missing. There is this body that is missing and in some ways her fiancé is her body. He plays guitar; he’s a nurse; he’s unshaven, and he plays basketball. There’s something that completes that side of her. And when he goes, she becomes kind of a ghost, like a voice in the night that’s just really a ghost.

Do you have an idea of what you want the audience to draw from the film?
For me, this is a very sophisticated film that in some ways has references to the films of the 1970s, our American movies of the 1970s, films that are portraits of an anti-hero in some ways. Of violence and range without simplifying it by a moral objectivity. I feel like it is a very moving, very deep, sophisticated film and in the end I hope that people will feel completely disgusted and really sad and terrified by the experience. It should be shocking. It should be surprising and shocking and it is a big social commentary, not just on New York but also on Americans.

Do you think the law works?
Our criminal justice system works beautifully because most of the time the people who are guilty – and occasionally, people who are not guilty – find themselves convicted. And occasionally those who are guilty go free, but pretty much most of the time, the balance goes in the right direction. Yes, with every system there will be the exceptions and there will be those cases, but I still absolutely believe in the law. That’s who I am. I am a law-follower.

I went to a good school and I got good grades and I didn’t cheat, and I never will. Playing monopoly with my kids, I don’t cheat! I’m not going to let them have 10 more dollars. You’re not playing in a game with me where I’m going to cheat. In some ways, that’s who Erica thought she was. And the beauty of the film in some ways is its literary quality, not so much as an action film but a literary film. You have this existentialist character who is in some ways numb and unfinished at the beginning of the movie. Somebody who doesn’t interact with life. She is kind of just a witness. And she becomes this ghost-like phantom and through this terrible rage finds a side of herself that she never knew that she had. Something monstrous and horrible. But is in some ways also terrifyingly beautiful.

Do you think there are parallels between this film and Taxi Driver?
I think it’s a great comparison. Taxi Driver is a wonderful movie and it’s a great American classic. It was 25 years ago and New York is a completely different place now. First of all, Erica is an entirely different character to Travis Bickle. Not only is she female, which totally changes her experience, but she’s conscious. She’s intelligent and she’s philosophical, and she knows what is happening. Travis is completely unconscious and totally unaware. He reacts on his emotions and he doesn’t know why. He has a perspective on the world that is entirely subjective. He has no higher side that is looking down on his experiences, so that makes it a completely different movie. It has a different feeling to it too.

Also, the New York of the 1970s was directly after Vietnam. His character is also sort of Vietnam vet etc. This is New York after 9/11. It is the safest big city in the world; it’s not like it was in the 70s. When I shot Taxi Driver in the ’70s we shot it on 13th and 3rd with all the child prostitutes; today, you can’t get an apartment there for under 4 million dollars! I mean, that’s like a fantastic neighbourhood in New York. It is a changed environment and yet there is this terrible undercurrent of fear that’s unwarranted. It is the safest big city in the world. There are cops everywhere; there are cameras everywhere, and yet why is it… If you are the one person, the one in a million that it happens to, does it make you feel safer to know you are living in the safest city in the world?

How do feel after 40 years of cinema?
I really don’t know. Isn’t it crazy? I really can’t believe it. When I was a kid my mom said: “By the time you’re 16 or 17, your career will be over, so get used to that idea.” So, at 18 I thought: “Okay well I’ll just try a little bit and I’ll make some money and then I’ll go on to other things.” But it just kind of continued. And then my mom always said: “Women’s careers are always over at 40. So, what are you going to do you after your 40s?” And I was very prepared for that, to say: “Okay, well I’ve been a producer and I’ve been a director, and I won’t be an actor in my 40s.” But it just keeps going…

How do you feel about the future?
I don’t know… I’m not too excited about acting in my 50s but I’m very excited about acting in my 70s. I feel like that’s a whole new career of roles that will be so interesting and different. To be a real person who has lived with that experience and who has that face. And I am happy to embrace that. I am excited about that.

What’s your next project?
I start shooting in two weeks. It’s a kids movie based in Australia called Nim’s Island. It is with Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler. I’m really looking forward to working with him. It’s a kid’s movie about a little girl being on a desert island somewhere off the coast of Fiji with her father, who is a botanist. I play an adventure book writer who cannot leave her house. So I somehow connect up with this girl by e-mail and I end up trying to go to save her but I’m a wreck.

b>Read our review of The Brave One

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