“He has one of those amazing brains”: Jodie Foster on the best director she ever worked with
Conversations about the best director in film history are plentiful around here because the answer is so subjective and really depends on your taste.
Personally, my vote goes for Sidney Lumet, because I love so many of his movies. But if you wanted an answer with real authority, it’s probably best to seek the opinion of an actor who has worked under several directors over many decades, someone like Jodie Foster, for example.
She is without doubt one of the greatest actors in cinema history, a genuine game changer who started her career as a kid in television in the late 1960s before starting a film career at the beginning of the following decade, and working under Martin Scorsese for the first time on 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. He then cast her again two years later, and it was a role that proved to be a revelation, her work on Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro landing her a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination at just 14.
It launched a career that spanned six decades and any number of acclaimed films, during which Foster worked with almost every esteemed director in modern cinema, including, deep breath, Alan Parker, Spike Lee, David Fincher, Woody Allen (boo), Roman Polanski (boo again) and Robert Zemeckis, who she worked together with on 1997’s sci-fi Contact, which co-starred Matthew McConaughey in an early role. The film was originally conceived by famed TV astronomer Carl Sagan, who died just before the movie was released.
Foster spoke about the process to film author Robert J Emery, saying: “Well, I think everybody knows, and I certainly found this out, that Bob Zemeckis is probably the greatest technician director that I’ve ever worked with, ever. He walks onto the set every single day and invents something new and people scurry around trying to figure out how to make it. He just has one of those amazing brains that he really can translate the storytelling of the movie into a very epic, very technical, very visual sense, very visual style.”
Zemeckis is certainly a director who has consistently attempted to push the boundaries of what’s possible with movie visuals, using innovative techniques on films like 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which blended animation with live action, motion capture on Tom Hanks’ The Polar Express, manipulating historical footage on Forrest Gump and de-ageing actors, again with Hanks on 2024’s time-jumping drama Here.
Zemeckis is also one of the most successful directors in box office history, with his movies including Back to the Future, What Lies Beneath, Cast Away, and Denzel Washington’s Flight having grossed some $4.5bn over the years.
Foster meanwhile shows no signs of slowing down; still in her early 60s she was acclaimed for her performance in the French mystery thriller A Private Life last year, won a Golden Globe for the fourth season of True Detective in 2024 and the year before that she was Oscar nominated for Nyad, the sports drama about a swimmer called Diane Nyad who attempted to swim the 93 mile-wide Florida Straits in the early 2010s.
The movie co-starred Annette Bening, who also picked up multiple industry awards for her performance as Nyad in the film, including her own Oscar nomination.
