‘I never thought I would become an actor when I grew up’

Jodie Foster didn’t plan on becoming an actress in her 20s, let alone her 60s.

“I never thought I would be an actor growing up, and my mother was very clear about that,” the two-time Oscar winner said during a Real detective Q&A in Los Angeles on Thursday. “She always said, ‘So are you going to be a lawyer or a doctor?'”

The actress, who started her career at the age of three, has since won numerous accolades, including, most recently, an Emmy Award for her work on the HBO series. True Detective: Nightland. Foster and co-star Kali Reis play detectives in Alaska who investigate the disappearance of eight men in a research lab and its connection to the indigenous community.

Foster explained that when she was younger, the prevailing wisdom was that child actors would “never grow up to be real actors” because it was such a difficult path.

“So [my mother] I would always say my career would be over by the time I was 18,” she explained. “When I went to college, I just expected this to be the end of everything and then I would have to figure everything out.”

When her mother warned her again that her career would be over at 40 — even though she had already won several Oscars and Golden Globes — she said she became “very, very nervous again,” but then realized, “here I am.” ‘

At 62, Foster said she “enjoys doing the older acting stuff.”

“There’s something about the grittiness and the reality of it and not having the pressure to, I don’t know, conform to some weird celebrity status thing,” she added. “So for me, the happiest years of acting are like the last ten years.”

The actress brings some of that grittiness to her role as Detective Liz Danvers Real detectivea character who has mixed Indigenous children and who she described as “the racist bastard that lives inside all of us.”

Foster said that in a series that touches on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, she wanted to take a step back and center Reis’ role as a mixed-race Indigenous woman learning about her Iñupiat community. Reis himself is a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag tribe.

“The most important thing was that the Native story would be the central story and we are here to serve that,” Foster said.

Foster said she approached showrunner Issa López with proposed changes for her character and the show — something López initially said she was apprehensive about.

“Jodie was very clear that this woman should have started out as an asshole” before a tragic loss would tarnish her character, López said.

“You hear so often that sometimes actors’ notes can be difficult,” she continued. ‘But when [Foster] said this, instead of saying, ‘F*** my life’, instead of saying, what happened is: [I thought]’Oh, that’s interesting.’”

Foster said it was “very important to me that the story be told with Kali’s character as the central character, and then I reimagine everything around that.”

For Reis, this meant delving deeper into other indigenous cultures beyond her own.

“Being Indigenous, especially mixed Indigenous, doesn’t mean you know everything about being Indigenous,” she said. “It’s not one-size-fits-all.”

Reis approached Indigenous consultants for the show because she wanted to do it “the right way.”

“I just asked them, ‘What do you want to see on the screen? How do you want to see yourself portrayed?” she explained. “’How did you grow up? Tell me some funny things, some dark things, anything you can share with me because I don’t want to assume. I want to do it right. ”

She also praised Foster for her work and support, while admitting she was “hella starstruck” when they first met.

“[Foster] I just came in with that smile and just wanted to get started and figure out how we could tell this amazing story,” said Reis. “But it was like, ‘This is cool because we’re all on the same kind of playing field.’

That said, Reis added: “It was great, but I was terrified. She is a little package of greatness.”