The only role Jodie Foster would bring to a desert island: “This one, absolutely”
Starting her career before she was even old enough to understand the concept of acting, Jodie Foster has been part of Hollywood since the 1960s, even bagging herself an Oscar nomination when she was just 14 years old for her role as a child prostitute in Taxi Driver.
Her first win came with The Accused just over a decade on; however, her second Oscar, this time for The Silence of the Lambs, arrived only a few years later. A versatile talent, the actor has firmly made her mark on Hollywood with these iconic roles (who can forget that she also starred in the original Freaky Friday?), but if there’s one she would theoretically take with her to a desert island, it’s not one you might expect.
It’s often the case that actors cherish roles that were received rather badly, and this couldn’t have been more true for one of Foster’s most favourite parts in a negatively reviewed ‘80s experimental drama that certainly bit off more than it could chew. Still, she had bags of fun while filming it, and sometimes that’s all that really matters.
Siesta, released in 1987, saw Ellen Barkin play a woman who wakes up in the middle of Spain, unsure how she got there but certain that she has been up to no good. Trying to recollect the events of her days before she leapt from a plane, the film follows her encounters with some bizarre people, with Foster playing a posh British woman named Nancy, which received differing levels of praise.
Defending the film in an interview with B Ruby Rich, she explained that it was the feature debut of director Mary Lambert, and she was impressed by the experimental choices she made. “It was [a] European movie and I saw it that way. I saw it as a real rip off of an [Michelangelo] Antonioni movie, and I love those pictures, and sometimes they’re flawed and strange and all of that… The character I play, I was the only one in the whole movie who had fun. I had fun, I’ll tell you.”
Foster described her character as “a British trust fund girl, what’s called a Sloane Ranger, in a Chanel suit with perfect lipstick and a perfect Hermes scarf, who goes around kissing everyone and dancing whenever she feels like it. There’s something to be said for that. I had a great time! It was so fun! Actually, I’ve never had as much fun making a movie because I’ve never played anyone so opposite. It was great.”
Getting the chance to play someone so far-removed from herself and her own upbringing was exciting for Foster, even if critics weren’t convinced by her accent. Still, she doubled down on the role as her desert island pick, noting that she might be considered a serious actor, but, “I guess underneath it all I’m really stupid”.
The movie bombed in every sense of the word, making just over $600,000 on a budget of $3.5million, which is grounds for calling something pretty bad. The experience was evidently enjoyable enough for Foster to ignore the terrible ratings that defined this late-80s disaster, though.
