Best Of: Jodie Foster / Tessa Thompson
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Jodie Foster. She's been acting since she was three. And when she was nine, she was working on a Disney film with a trained lion who went off script and picked her up in his mouth.
He held me horizontally and then flipped me around and shook me.
What early experiences shaped Jodie Foster's acting career?
So I watched the entire film crew run in the opposite direction, sideways.
Foster was 12 when she played a child prostitute in Taxi Driver, a role that would define her early career and make her one of the most celebrated actors of her generation. Also, we hear from Tessa Thompson.
What was Jodie Foster's experience working with a lion as a child actor?
She stars in the new Netflix murder mystery limited series His and Hers. She's built a career on characters in independent films and blockbusters, from Valkyrie in the Marvel Universe to Bianca in the Creed films to the calculating Charlotte in Westworld. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
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This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has today's first interview.
Here she is. My guest is Jodie Foster, and we're going to look back on her life and career, starting with her early days as a child actor and her Oscar-nominated performance in Taxi Driver when she was 12. Next month marks the film's 50th anniversary. She recently received an Oscar nomination for the film Nyad, an Emmy win for the latest season of the HBO series True Detective, and is now starring in a new French language film, A Private Life. Along the way, Foster won many awards, including Oscars for the films The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. In a private life, she plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris, and with the exception of a few lines, she speaks French throughout the film.
When the film begins, everyone is angry with her, including her patients. One of them accuses her of having wasted his time. He's been in therapy with her for years, hoping it would help him quit smoking. It hasn't helped.
What challenges did Tessa Thompson face in her career?
So he tried a hypnotist, and after only one session, he quit cigarettes. Foster's character is very skeptical of hypnosis, but when one of her patients, a beautiful woman, dies under mysterious circumstances, Foster's character wants to get to the bottom of what happened, hoping she wasn't in any way responsible. Despite her skepticism, she sees a hypnotist, goes under, and that sets her on a path to uncover what happened to her patient. Jodi Foster, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's been years, and my impression is your life has changed a lot since then.
I don't know. It's moved on, but, you know, it's the same old me. And I'm always so happy to be on NPR because I'm such an NPR fan and such an NPR head.
That is so great to hear. So your new film is in French, and you went to French language school, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. My mom, when I was about nine years old, she had never traveled anywhere in her life. And she, right before then, she took a trip to France and fell in love with it and said, okay, you're going to learn French, you're going to go to an immersion school, and someday maybe you'll be a French actor.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:22
2
What early experiences shaped Jodie Foster's acting career?
0:22–0:41
3
What was Jodie Foster's experience working with a lion as a child actor?
0:41–3:18
4
What challenges did Tessa Thompson face in her career?
3:18–8:02
5
How does Tessa Thompson navigate her biracial identity?
8:02–11:35
6
How did Jodie Foster prepare for her role in 'A Private Life'?
11:35–31:14
7
What is the significance of Tessa Thompson's new series 'His and Hers'?
31:14–50:32
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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