Extended interview: Jodie Foster reflects on her career, motherhood and more

Welcome. I'm Tracy Smith and this is Here Comes the Sun, a closer look at some of the people, places, and things we bring you every weekend on Sunday morning. A-lister Jodie Foster has been acting since the age of three, urged on by her mother, who was also her early manager. The two-time Oscar winner spoke with Lee Cowan about the longevity of her career and choices made along the way. You were kind of forced into it, I guess isn't really the right word, but you didn't choose it. No, I didn't. I didn't choose it. But at some point you chose to keep doing it. Yes. I knew that there was sort of an unsaid thing that, you know, you accept these parameters or you can always stop. You can always say no. That was always an option? It was always an option, but it's a little bit of like, you know, here you can have this dog food or you can starve. Later in the show, Jodie Foster on her role as a mother. Amazing, amazing part of my life that is so interwoven with everything that I am, being a mom. And now my boys are 25 and 22. You know, we've evolved into this great relationship that is, yes, I'm a mom to them, but I'm also their friend. I learn so much from them and I'm so proud of them and we have a great time together. Then it's been said art is everywhere, but what about the bottom of a dirty whiskey glass? David Pogue introduces us to an artist finding inspiration in a very unusual place. So tell me about the color. The whiskey didn't look like that. It did not. I put different colored lights, different colored gels in from behind. So that's what's giving the purple and the blues and the orange. And before you do that, what would it look like? It would look relatively whitish gray. So yeah, nature is giving me the pattern. I'm giving it the light. That's all coming up right here on Here Comes the Sun. Jodie Foster is back in a big way after spending much of the last decade on smaller roles and focusing on her marriage and raising two sons. She stars in HBO's True Detective, portraying a determined police chief and Netflix's Nyad as long-distance swimmer Diane Nyad's coach. Lee Cowan caught up with her in her hometown, Los Angeles. I had my time and it's not my time necessarily anymore. It's my time to support other people and I have something to contribute because I have experience and I have wisdom, but I don't have to play the same role that I played when I was in my 20s. That is the wisdom that actor Jodie Foster found when she entered into her 60s, a kind of professional epiphany that she blames on mother nature. I think it might be a chemical thing that happens to you when you're older where you just kind of relax. That's really saying something since she started her career at the age of three. You don't have to worry about me. Just take good care of yourself. Don't catch any cold or anything. With nearly 100 credits to her name and two Oscars, she says she's always had a frustrating on-again-off-again love affair with acting. Sometimes I go through years where I just don't want to act for a while. I don't find anything. I'll read a perfectly good script about a perfectly good thing that I should be interested in and I just don't care. For most of the last decade, Foster was focused on her marriage to Alexandra Hedison and raising her two teenage boys, but then two roles came around that have her now back in front of the camera again. Some people come to Alaska to escape, get away from something. You don't even think of me! And she says she's prouder of them than almost anything she's done. If you die, I want to be the last person you see. Don't die, but if you do, I'll be right there with you. She's already earned Golden Globe and Critics' Choice nominations for her role in the Netflix original There's No One More Nyad Than You. Nyad, where she plays Bonnie Stoll, friend and coach to swimmer Diana Nyad, played by Annette Bening. What were you thinking? You pathetic stupid. Hey, hey, hey, no. No, no, no, no. Stupid, stupid. None of that, none of that. Don't beat yourself up. You're doing great. I think it was much more challenging for Annette. I spent a lot of time on the side of the boat, sucking in my stomach. That's pretty much what I did. In my jogger bra. I'm not working with you again ever. You think I want to work with you? I do, actually. Yeah. Then, after a five-year wait, there's the highly anticipated fourth season of HBO's True Detective. My job is to keep everyone safe. Night Country is just as spooky and supernatural as the first True Detective, but this time, it's set in the frigid polar winter nights of Alaska. Was it as cold as it looked up there when you were shooting? It was probably colder than it looked. There are moments where it's really hard to speak. It's so cold that your mouth kind of talks like that. Stop f***ing around. This is a crime scene. Aren't you pretending like you know what you're doing? Foster plays Detective Liz Danvers, who's confronting a certain darkness of her own. No, you're not going to blame her on me. I wasn't even here. You know who was here? You. I didn't think that I would come back at this level or I didn't think that I would come back to acting as often as I have now. Many thought acting was just her destiny. After all, Hollywood has always been home. Every L.A. kid loves growing up in L.A. True. That's their reference. Did you? I loved it. She lived with her mom and three siblings, just a mile from what was then a very gritty walk of fame. You were talking about Hollywood Boulevard and how very different that it is now. Yes, we weren't allowed to go there. She said that if she ever found us on Hollywood Boulevard that we shouldn't come home. Foster's mom, Brandi Foster, got her into acting and, as her early manager, kept her in it, she says, in a gentle but firm way. She's asked me about a thousand times, you know, do you want to be an actress? And I could have always said no, but I don't. It's fun. You said you were kind of forced into it, I guess isn't really the right word, but you didn't choose it. No, I didn't. I didn't choose it. But at some point you chose to keep doing it. Yes. I knew that there was sort of an unsaid thing, that, you know, you accept these parameters or you can always stop. You can always say no. That was always an option? It was always an option, but it's a little bit of like, you know, here, you can have this dog food or you can starve, you know, there's a little bit of that. Despite being the youngest child, there was always a maturity about her, an old soul in a young frame. And this is me, born in Mount View Hospital 13 years ago, give or take a month. Female, blonde, natural, of course. I'm like such an awkward adolescent in Freaky Friday, like lots of pimples and kind of chubby and greasy hair and all that. Gross. I wish I could switch places with her for just one day. She proved she could convincingly play characters wise beyond her age. Even her own mother. Those are kind of my home movies. What's your name? Easy. Well, that's not any kind of name. That's easy to remember. Yeah, but what's your real name? I don't like my real name. She was already a veteran actor at the tender age of 12 when she was cast as an underage prostitute. In Taxi Driver. Why do you want me to go back to my parents? I mean, they hate me. Why do you think I split in the first place? There ain't nothing there. I didn't really understand what building a character was until I did Tax Driver. If there was an ambivalence about her career, she says, it was rarely about the work. It was about the celebrity that came with it. You said that you were, you've said it a bunch of times actually, I think that you're an introvert in an extrovert's job. That's still the case? Definitely true. Yeah, I'm 100% an introvert. I've never been okay with being a public figure. It's not something that's ever felt okay to me. I felt healthy. She was in college at Yale when an obsessed fan, John Hinckley Jr., said he attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan to get Foster's attention. Last fall, I received several pieces of unsolicited correspondence signed John W. Hinckley or JWH, and I threw them all away. She was dragged into history through no fault of her own. Foster then endured years of speculation about her private life, about her sons, about her sexuality, all of which she kept from the tabloids, much to their dismay. I tried to be as authentic as I possibly could, and I had to protect my own psyche from the publicness. I just had to figure out how to dig a trench around me and to survive intact. And some of that meant being more isolated. Is that trench still there? Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. And the roles she's generally taken, she says, seem to be characters who also have something to work on. What did you see, Clarice? What did you see? Lambs. They were screaming. There's always been an intensity or a vulnerability that have marked so many of her roles. I thought, I thought if I could save just one, but he was so heavy, so heavy. When she played a rape survivor in The Accused, she made us all uncomfortable. And rightly so. I have not seen The Accused in, I don't know, 25 years. I don't think I wanted to revisit it, actually. And he pushed me down on the pinball machine. And he ripped my shirt. He lifted my skirt. He pulled down my underpants really, really hard. I can only do one thing at once. I'm not a multitasker. So I'm a focuser. And if you're a focuser, you do, you get obsessed with things. I think every movie I make, I get obsessed with. Swim. No swim. You are a force. Nomad. So whether she's pretending to be in the Florida Straits, or straight out frozen in the Arctic Circle. Those men died before they froze. What the f***? Get out of here. Now. At 61, Jodie Foster now says she's reached a point of acknowledgement in her life. Yes, she's a little obsessed. And yes, she's an introvert. And yes. Yes, yes, I am crazy. But for one of the first times in her long professional life, Jodie Foster is finally feeling a little more free. I think I have managed to survive. And survive intact. And that was no small feat. And look at me. I survived. Up next, an exclusive excerpt from Lee Cowan's chat with Jodie Foster. Something you can only see right here on Here Comes the Sun. Stay with us. Now I can really sit back and sit in my chair and go like, this is good. Wow, I really, this is pretty damn good. As promised, here's more from Lee Cowan and Jodie Foster. When you were doing all the directing, like you said, in your 50s, were you, you weren't really that interested in acting, but was there a part of you that worried if you didn't get back into it, you might not ever get back into it? No, I kind of anticipated that's what would happen. Because my mom had told me like, you know, you leave for, it'll all be done. I assumed that's what would happen. I didn't assume that I, I mean, I kind of would say like, I'm really looking to working in my 70s and 80s. Because I want to be that person who plays like junky grandma or who's all like twisted up and messed up. And that's something that I look forward to. I love directing. I love it. It's, you know, it's intense. It takes a lot of energy and it takes a lot of time away from your family and from people you love. You know, it's two, three years, sometimes longer. So you have to love what you're going to do. And it has to, because I make personal films, no matter, even if it was a genre movie, it's going to be a personal film. I kind of have to download all of my stuff onto it. And that takes time. But I think it's worth it because you have this personal connection. Even if it's something you didn't write or you're actually in, you still need to. Yeah, yeah. I think that that work that you do with the writer is so creative. It's the most creative thing that you do when you're shooting film. It allows you to understand the minutiae of every character's journey. And I can't make a decision or a choice. You know, do I put the camera here or there? Or do I use this lens? Or should the person be wearing green or blue? I can't make any of those decisions or those choices until I've investigated it. And have understood the characters entirely. So it's a big commitment. So what do you like about sort of nurturing young people coming up? I like making them laugh. I've really now come to understand that that's the best way to direct me, is to direct through humor. And to be brutally honest and blunt. And to just feel the joy of that, you know, the joy of humor. So I bring that to the darkest stories. And hopefully my co-stars like that. And if I feel like, oh, uh-oh, I should not bring the humor today, then I just, you know, take it off to the side. It feels like, talking about these two, both Mayette and True Detective, that decades ago, a story about two gay partners or a story about a mom with a gay daughter would have raised some eyebrows. And now it really doesn't anymore. So we've come a long way. At least I think it doesn't raise eyebrows anymore, but maybe I'm wrong. Well, we're living in a different time. And a time that's much more conscious. And my time was much more conscious than my parents, you know, than my family. I mean, hopefully we're moving progressively forward and becoming more open and more free. That's what we hope. I guess we'll see as time goes on, whether there's a contraction or a narrowing of that freedom. But yeah, I'm proud, I think, that our culture has evolved so much. And I do carry, like all of us, I think we carry the luggage of how we were raised in the past. And our kids don't have to anymore. That's nice. When it comes to being a mom, how great a chapter has that been? Amazing. Amazing part of my life. That is so interwoven with everything that I am, being a mom. And now, my boys are 25 and 22, you know, we've evolved into this great relationship that is, yes, I'm a mom to them, but I'm also their friend. I learn so much from them. And I'm so proud of them. And we have a great time together. We really have fun together. Is there anything that you get out of work now that maybe you didn't 10 or 20 years ago? There's so many things I appreciate now about work that I don't know. Maybe it was just a different time, or I was too busy, or I was too filled with anxiety, or I was too ambitious or impatient. And now I can really sit back and sit in my chair and go like, this is good. Wow, I really, this is pretty damn good. So what's next? What's next? Oh, my gosh. I have no idea what's next. How about that? No idea. I'm hoping to direct next. I've been working on something for a while that I'm hoping to do a limited series next. But you never know. You never know. You never know what's going to happen. Up next, finding art at the bottom of the glass. Welcome back. Art may be in the eye of the beholder, but photographer Ernie Button has found it in dirty dishes of all places. Here's David Pogue. At this photography exhibit in Las Vegas, you might not know right away what you're looking at. I would think this one would be like a cross-section of a tree. I'd say in this one, I see something, maybe a moon effect or a planet. But in fact, these are photos of evaporated whiskey crud. So the title of the project is Vanishing Spirits, The Dried Remains of Single Malt Scotch. After you've taken that last drop or that last sip of whiskey, the residue dries in the bottom of the glass and leaves me these wonderful patterns. Ernie Button's day job is speech pathology, but his hobbies include photography and drinking Scotch whiskey in the evening. That's how this whole thing began in 2008. And when I went to collect the glasses in the morning, I noticed this film in the bottom of the glass. And when I held it up to the light, I saw these fine repetitive patterns in the bottom of the glass. I'm like, I can try and do something with this. So tell me about the color. The whiskey didn't look like that. It did not. I put different colored lights, different colored gels in from behind. So that's what's giving the purple and the blues and the orange. And before you do that, what would it look like? It would look relatively whitish gray. So nature is giving me the pattern. I'm giving it the light. These days, he experiments with different kinds of drinking glasses, sheets of glass, and whiskeys from different parts of the world. Have you ever tried chocolate milk? Have you ever tried 7-Up? I've tried a lot of different alcohols. I found that they have to be aged in a cask. So they have to be in a wooden cask, you know, taking in, you know, all the organic material from the wood into that spirit that was put in there. Tequila, that will work. That will give me some interesting images. Vodka won't. I mean, you have an area of knowledge that probably nobody in the world has. Yeah, I'm not sure what to do with it. In fact, he's done plenty with it. His whiskey photos have been featured in the New York Times and in National Geographic. They inspired a published scientific paper. And they're published in a coffee table art book. Is there a takeaway? Is there a lesson? The ignored or the overlooked can have relevance, can have interest. If you don't look around, if you don't pay attention to the really small things in life, you could miss out on something really big. I'm Tracy Smith. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you here next time on Here Comes the Sun.