Jodie Foster says working with Gen Z is “annoying”
The legendary American actor Jodie Foster, star of Taxi Driver, The Silence of the Lambs and Panic Room, has discussed the modern movie industry in a new interview.
During the conversation, the 61-year-old actor turned her attention to the new wave of Generation Z actors just setting out on their careers. Although Foster admires their efforts for “authenticity,” she thinks they need to “learn how to relax” and can be “really annoying, especially in the workplace.”
Foster is currently promoting her 2023 movie Nyad and spoke to The Guardian about her long and successful career to date. Asked what advice she could offer aspiring actors, Foster replied: “They need to learn how to relax, how to not think about it so much, how to come up with something that’s theirs.”
Foster added that she likes to think she can offer guidance to younger actors. “I can help [actors of Gen Z] find that, which is so much more fun than being, with all the pressure behind it, the protagonist of the story,” she said.
It appears that Foster’s willingness to teach comes from a degree of frustration. “They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” she continued. “They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30 a.m.’ Or, like, in emails, I’ll tell them, ‘This is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling?’ And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
Despite Foster’s criticism of Generation Z actors, she reserves plenty of praise for the 20-year-old star Bella Ramsey. In December, Foster was introduced by Ramsey at a Women in Hollywood celebration at Foster’s request.
“I reached out to Bella because we’d never met, and said, ‘I want you to introduce me at this thing,’ which is a wonderful event about actors and people in the movies, but is also very much a fashion thing,” she said.
“It’s determining who represents us,” she continued. “[The organizers] are very proud of themselves because they’ve got every ethnicity, and I’m like, yeah, but all the attendees are still wearing heels and eyelashes. [But] there are other ways of being a woman, and it’s really important for people to see that.”
Foster thought it was important to give Ramsey a voice as an emerging non-binary actor. “Bella, who gave the best speech, was wearing the most perfect suit, beautifully tailored, and a middle parting and no makeup,” Foster added.
When asked if she could’ve done something similar during her rise to prominence in the 1970s and ‘80s, Foster replied: “No. Because we weren’t free… we didn’t have freedom. And hopefully, that’s what the vector of authenticity that’s happening offers – the possibility of real freedom. We had other things that were good. And I would say: I did the best I could for my generation. I was very busy understanding where I fitted in and where I wanted to be in terms of feminism. But my lens wasn’t wide enough. I lived in an incredibly segregated world.”
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.