Interviews Brave One Interview - October 2007 Jodie Foster speaks about her experience working in 'The Brave One,' apart from her future projects and her journey so far in the world of cinema. How do you feel after a movie like this? It was such a satisfying opportunity. I love Neil Jordan. He is 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 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 is an intellectual. She is somebody who thinks about life and thinks about the world and is in some ways quite philosophical. She is not just an unconscious beast. So, I think that is similar to me. And I do tend to choose roles that are 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 am usually the central person, and I think that is 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 am 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 am mad, I get really articulate. I am 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 is 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. 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. You hit hour seven and it’s funny. It is kind of a meditational experience. Anyway, so that was important, but also the radio stuff. She says specifically, ‘I am not a face, and I am not a body. I am a voice.’ And that is why we know that there is something wrong with her before the film starts. Not just after the crime, but before the film starts there is a part of her that is missing. There is this body that is missing and in some ways her fiancé is her body. He plays guitar; he is a nurse; he is unshaven, and he plays basketball. There is something that completes that side of her. And when he goes, she becomes a kind of a ghost, like a voice in the night that is 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 antihero 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 there are parallels between this film and Taxi Driver? I think it is a great comparison. Taxi Driver is a wonderful movie and it is 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 is conscious. She is intelligent and she is 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. 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 are 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.’ It just keeps going. What is your next project? I start shooting soon. It’s a kids movie based in Australia called Nim’s Island. It is with Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler. I am really looking forward to working with him. It is 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 and 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 am a wreck.