Top 183 Quotes & Sayings by Jodie Foster - Page 3

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 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 want to change the system from within the system. And that means focusing and specializing.

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 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.

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.

Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone’s privacy, to destroy someone’s sense of self.

Sometimes, you really don't understand why something is important to you until you get halfway through the movie - or maybe even all the way through.

There is nothing in this world that I am prouder of than my ability to feel, to survive and, yes, to be a fool for what I love and believe in.

Now apparently I'm told that every celebrity is expected to honour the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show.

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

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

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

I'm not interested in being perfect when im older. Im interested in having a narrative. It's the narrative that's really the most beautiful thing about women.

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

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

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

There is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God.

What I didn't realize is how completely consumed I would be by my sons. I didn't know that the rest of my life would become so little a priority.

When I go into the stores, I pet the saddles. Until security comes and takes me away.

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

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?

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.

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.

You guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.

Where I have problems is when I am in the midst of doing something that I am completely focused on, and then I am asked to buy shoes or something.

~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 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.

When I went home, my family became a little lonely family because it was just me and my mom. Part of my longing to go back to work was wanting to be surrounded by these people who were teaching me things and drinking bad coffee at three in the morning while we were lying around in a bikini in the winter. Somehow it just felt like real life. It felt more like real life than my life.

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

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.

What do I do to live? What do I do to be vital? The answer is always creativity; the answer is always art.

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?

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".

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.

There's absolutely no sort of acknowledgment or reward for this - except for the intangible of my kids growing up to be wonderful people.

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 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 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.

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.

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 didn't grow up really wanting to be an actor. I don't remember ever not being an actor.

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

There are lots of futurists that spend their whole life trying to figure out who we're going to be in 40, 50, 60, 100 years. That's the great thing about science fiction.

What the digital age has offered us, in terms of connectivity and transparency, is that all of these people from weird places in the world are all talking to each other, at four in the morning, and are sharing ideas. There's more openness than has ever been known, so that's a good thing.

I didn't work very much when they were young, and I had the luxury to be able to do that. Most people can't.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

We think, "If I have more money, I am more valuable. If I make more money, I am more valuable." It's all sort of wound up with this problem that humans have with their failure.

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.