JODIE FOSTER

Reflecting on her own performance in Hotel Artemis, Foster says, “I’m happy with my performance in the film because I feel like it’s a combination of grounded and emotional, and there’s that kind of Barbara Stanwyck, wisecracky feeling to it as well. That’s really what I was looking for: the opportunity to have more of a transformation, to play a character role but still to inhabit the character with emotion.”

One aspect that drew Foster to the character was the challenge of altering her appearance for the role — though she reveals that made producers question wary of casting someone as famous as her in the first place. She explains, “That’s really the reason I wanted to do the movie, and I had to fight for it. I’ve been looking for a transformation character for five years. I think the producers were a little scared. They were like: ‘Wait a minute. You’re not going to look bad, are you?’ [laughs]It’s like: ‘If you’re not the same Jodie Foster everybody’s used to seeing, then do we want that?’ But it was important. That was the character. She’s a 70-year-old woman who hasn’t left that room for 25 years and lives on tacos and hasn’t had any vitamin D.”

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Foster reveals that there was a sizeable chance that she would not have played Starling even though she desperately wanted the role. She reveals, “I had just won an Oscar so I thought I’ve got a shot. It was going to be directed by Gene Hackman, who was going to play Crawford and he read the first draft [but] said that it was too violent and he dropped out. I thought I’d be considered to direct but the studio said that the next director was going to be Jonathan Demme and he’s not interested in you. I was devastated. So, I got on a plane and I said to him I want to be your second choice and eventually got the role.”

Though the interplay between Lecter and Starling is one of the most memorable aspects of the movie, Foster admits that the two actually didn’t work much with each other on set. She says, “I did the whole first part of the movie without him; he went off [after rehearsal] to go and shoot another movie. He only shot for 7 or 10 days or maybe even less. I never saw him until halfway through the movie. Much of the dialogue is straight to camera, a Hitchcock technique so some days I never even saw him. It was the last day of shooting and I was eating a tuna fish sandwich and I said ‘I was a little scared of you’ and he said ‘I was scared of you’ and then we had a big hug.”

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