When Jodie Foster got mauled by a lion and Disney made her cover it up: “I had been bitten”
There are many stories to make people question the ethics of child acting. Usually, they involve things like drugs or drinking, inappropriate behaviour from the adults around them, or general exploitation that reaps devastating consequences when they grow up. But this one might be the wildest case yet, as Jodie Foster was literally mauled by a tiger, and no one gave a shit.
It was 1972, and Foster was working on her first-ever feature film at the age of nine. She wasn’t new to a set by any means, though, as the young actor had been working since she was three, starring first in commercials and then in television, as she starred in over 50 shows, all while still a kid. She was booked and busy, and between herself and her brother, who was also an actor, the two kids became the breadwinners of their family.
There is an ethical debate in that about whether it’s ever right for the financial burden of a family to fall onto the shoulders of a child, or whether parents sending their young kids out to work is a healthy way to spend a childhood – but let’s stay on track.
It was 1972, and Foster was filming Napoleon and Samantha, a Disney movie about two kids and a lion. It was the film that made Foster a one-to-watch, moving her onto bigger things as she finally made her name in the film world. However, it could have been a very different outcome.
Working with wild animals always comes with a risk, but that’s heightened when it’s a kid working with them. For the most part, Foster’s interactions with the lion playing Major were all fine and smooth, handled properly by the right people to protect the little girl. But then, when something goes wrong, it can go very wrong.
“He got angry and basically turned around and picked me up in his mouth and turned me horizontally and shook me with me in his mouth,” Foster recalled, but swore, “I did not taunt the poor lion.”
With their backs turned for a second, it took the crew a moment to realise that their young star was literally in a lion’s mouth. “Eventually, after the crew had finished picking up lights and arcs and cameras and ran away, the trainer had the idea to yell the magic words, which were, ‘Drop it!’ That’s what he did,” Foster remembered, but it only got worse – this scene was being filmed on a cliff edge.
“He dropped me, and I went cascading down this cliff. There were all these stuntmen there to keep me from falling down this cliff, but they had gone immediately. I was going down this cliff and just about to go over,” she said, but then, while the adults had failed her, it was the guilty lion that saved her.
“The lion came down, ran down, and he smacked me on the side of my body to keep me from falling down the hill, so in fact he saved me,” Foster said.
That story alone is enough to raise some serious questions, but the reaction of the crew after makes the red flags even brighter as Foster was essentially gaslit into believing that it didn’t really happen. “I got shuttled off to this hospital and they said, ‘Oh no, honey, you fell’”, she said as she quickly tried to cover it all up. “They told my mom that I had fallen. They told everybody on the crew that I had fallen as well,” the actor remembered, but the clue of the truth was right there on her body as she continued, “I went to the shower and realised that I had been bitten.”
“It was quite a complicated affair, but in general, it was a big cover-up. It was like a big motion picture cover-up,” Foster said, as not only did they try to make her forget the whole thing, but they then set about desperately hiding the story from the production company and on screen, covering up the markings. But they’re there as Foster now seems a little shell-shocked, stating, “I have scars. I don’t know if it was near death.”
