Quotes from Jodie Foster

Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.

I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies.

I like to be in a different place when I make a movie so that I can't really focus on anything else, and that is your world.

I think every movie changes me and is life changing, especially movies you direct.

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

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I'm always more energized by directing. It's more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It's a huge passion for me.

Acting just happens to be my skill, but I think I would probably be just as happy being a technician or entering into the film business in some other way.

Otherness is a big thing for me. I'm always drawn to characters that live lives that I couldn't lead.

How will your experience pave the way for a new voice in America? I hope it will take you out these doors, out into the open air. You will breathe it in your lungs and say, "From now on, this life will be what I stand for . . . Move over–this is my story now."

The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.

So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.

I had to take my makeup off at work every night. I wasn't allowed to do it at home because my mom said that when your work day is done, you're done with work.

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.

It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.

But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.

I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies.

I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.

I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

I'm kind of a chatterbox and I talk really fast.

I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.