The one movie Jodie Foster was devastated nobody saw: “I thought it had everything”
It’s often the case that an actor will dedicate themselves to a project that they feel really passionate about, only for it to go virtually unnoticed.
Jodie Foster has been in plenty of acclaimed titles, spanning Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs to Nyad and True Detective, but there’s one movie she wishes had achieved more recognition. You never know what is going to become a success and what’s going to flop on its arse, and for Foster, she hoped a collaboration with legendary British filmmaker Tony Richardson wouldn’t fall into the latter category, but sadly, it did.
Richardson directed some classic social realist dramas during the 1960s, like A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, before helming the underrated Jeanne Moreau psychological thriller Mademoiselle.
With The Hotel New Hampshire, which saw Foster joined by the likes of Nastassja Kinski and Rob Lowe, audiences didn’t exactly take to the film, which failed to surpass $5million at the box office. While critics thought it was a pretty decent comedy-drama – apart from those in America, who didn’t seem to care for the film – the movie was certainly not one of Foster’s most memorable performances from the 1980s.
She finds this disappointing because she really enjoyed the movie, which follows the Berry family as they get caught up in various disasters. It’s a surprisingly dark film – for example, Foster’s character Franny gets raped rather early on in the movie – and this didn’t seem to resonate with many audiences.
Talking to B Ruby Rich in 1991, Foster revealed, “I love this movie, by the way. This is one of my favourite movies that I’ve made, and it’s very flawed, but it’s something to rent.” Admitting that she knows it’s not a perfect film, Foster still cherishes it, having had the chance to play the kind of character she’d never portrayed before.
“Through the course of this movie… This is the youngest I get in this movie, and then through the course, there’s 15 years, so if I acted very juvenile when I was actually in fact… I think I was 19 when I made this. It’s because it’s the beginning of the movie,” she explained.
Further elaborating on her appreciation for the movie, Foster continued, “Oh, I love this film. I thought this film was so courageous, and I was very disappointed when it didn’t do well. Not that I usually put much faith in that, but that was probably the last time I ever did really care about what audiences thought about the film. Because I thought it had everything. It was a piece of literature that got brought to fil,m and it really had a real cinematic quality as you see here.”
She clearly enjoyed the bold approach that Richardson took to putting serious issues, like rape and suicide, onto the big screen while maintaining a sense of humour – which is not easy to do. Sadly, not everyone else could say the same.
