Jodie Foster on Being Mauled by a Lion & Loving Fantasy Football | W Magazine

I have many scars. I was mauled by a lion when I was eight and a half or nine. The lion picked me up, shook me around, moved me horizontally and then dropped me. I had two perfect punctures in one side and then two perfect punctures on the other on my hip. But as the years have gone on and we get bigger, you know, they're like, they're totally, who even knows where they are anymore. So they kind of just move around. No, it was not film. It was after the shot was over. I was in shock. So I don't really remember that much. I remember the event. I saw his mane come forward and I had worked with the lions. But when he picked me up, he picked me up and they moved me sideways and shook me around. And so as he turned me back towards the whole camera crew, I saw the whole camera crew run. Except sideways. So I saw them running sideways, taking all of their equipment with them, just like running away from me. And then I guess the trainer said, drop it. And then the lion dropped me out of his mouth. I think that was probably the scariest thing that ever happened to me when I was making a movie. I'm not sure I had time for fear, honestly. After I got out of the hospital and it was deemed I was okay to work and everything, I went back to work with the same lion, but I was carrying a rooster and the rooster was not used to working with this particular lion. And I saw the lion like turn his head and kind of go like this, like maybe he was going to approach me or something. And I threw the rooster and I ran. I think that was like, that's probably a scarier moment. My name is Jodie Foster. The film that I'm here to talk about today is Vie Privée. I first got the script for Vie Privée and I knew that I was dying to do another French movie. I'd done a few French movies in my life, but I'd never done one that had this much dialogue. So it was a big challenge. It's a French movie and the whole crew is French and lots of people don't speak English and the whole cast is French. So I learned to speak French from the time I was nine years old. I went to the lycée français and then I've gone on to do a few films in France, you know, always a little careful so that they weren't like full-on too much dialogue for me. And I finally bit the bullet and jumped right into the pool. Mostly I was very scared, right? Because you're always scared that, you know, you're not going to be able to communicate your thoughts or somebody's going to throw an improvisation at you. And you know, what if you say something wrong? So there's a lot of anxiety that goes into it, which I think is kind of fun for the character that she's sure of herself, but also super anxious and worried that people aren't understanding her properly. In French, my voice is very high because when I learned French, I learned from all these women that all spoke in these high voices like that. And I guess I took that on. And so my character in the film has a much more kind of feminine way about her. And, you know, I've always been known for my froggy voice. They used to call me froggy when I was little. So it's a little different in French. Are you by nature superstitious? I am superstitious in a very funny way. I will wear my team's colors when I'm watching the game. Green Bay. So my team's colors are yellow for cheese from Wisconsin and green, I'm not sure why, but yeah, it's green and yellow. I will break those out, certainly during playoffs. Of course, I have rams, I have t-shirts, I have, you know, headbands, all this kind of stuff for the rams because, you know, I'm a Los Angelino. But sometimes, you know, if my teams aren't playing very well, I'll root for other people's teams. I do fantasy football sporadically because I'm obsessive and I like to win and I'm a perfectionist. It takes a lot of energy out of my life. My whole life becomes about fantasy. So I have to decide what years I do it and not if I'm working and I'm shooting in a different country, it makes it very difficult for me to do fantasy. Have you done this your whole life, been interested in football? I really loved it as a kid because the International House of Pancakes, every time you bought a pancake, they would give you these little helmets and you didn't know what helmet you were going to get. But they very smartly used it as a marketing tool and I was obsessed with these little helmets and I learned all the team's names based on the helmets and I had this little collection of helmets, which I have today. I have one in LA and one in New York because, you know, you don't want to ever leave home without it. I have never gone as a football player for Halloween. I have many other Halloween outfits. I am the queen of Halloween. I decorate things that blow up that have to be plugged in. There's shadows of bats flying over the house and things like that. I really love that. What I've learned as I've gotten older is that you don't have to pick a character. You can be five different characters. Because I have so many different costumes, I don't want to just be one. So I will put, you know, a pink beehive and I'll put it also with like, you know, a vampire and a witch and, you know, whatever. Sometimes I must abstain from Halloween if I am in a foreign country where they don't, you know. Or if I'm all really all by myself, sometimes I'm like, you know, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to get dressed up from all by myself. But even in New York City, where they don't really do Halloween that much, I think there's one child in my building who everybody's very greedy about getting that one child to come to their door. And I get the whole thing. I've got like this bowl that says, get out of my candy bowl and their big hand, a big bloody hand comes forward and like tries to grab your hand while you're trying to grab the candy. I pull that one out. Do you have any favorite reality shows besides football? Which isn't really a reality show. My favorite reality show is The Secret Life of Swedish Death Cleaning. They are three people that come from Sweden. So of course they like to have espresso breaks. And they come to you when you've too much stuff in your life and you don't know what to do with it. Because usually of some grief. And one person is like a designer and he comes in he's like, okay, we're going to move this here, we're going to move that there, we're going to take this stuff, put this stuff in storage, we're going to sell this stuff. And then the other person is a psychologist who talks about why you're holding on to these things. And then the other person is an organizer. And it's so moving that I was like, now this is what a reality show should be. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. What movie makes you cry? You'd be so surprised because I don't cry in life. Where I cry is in the movie theaters. Like that, that is my place. And I am ashamed that I went to see Ghost and, you know, couldn't stop. I'm a little ashamed of it. That's my place in the dark. You know, that's the place where I can find that. I don't know. It's hard. In my own life, it's just not something that I ever do. Do you get starstruck? I get starstruck, but not by actors, really. I get starstruck by writers. And then I kind of lose my ability to speak. And I just sound like an idiot. Because I'm so worried that they're going to think I'm dumb that I can't string a sentence together. Now I'm starstruck for P.C. Anderson. Of course, he's made some of the most extraordinary movies this year. His movie is so amazing. I can't wait to see it again. Are you happiest when you're on a movie set? I like my creative cycle. So I like living my life and doing routine and taking out the garbage and washing the garbage cans and all that kind of stuff and traveling. And then I start getting itchy and I become obsessed with something. Then that shifts into obsession mode where I make a movie and I, you know, get up at three in the morning because I have to be at work by four and go to sleep at nine o'clock. And, you know, I'm lucky on the weekends if I'm able to just wash my clothes. And then I get resentful that all my time is taken up. By the time I get to the wrap party, I just want to go back to sleep. And I just want the thrill of ordinary life. And then I get bored again. So it's kind of like a, it's like a one year cycle. I do miss going to the supermarket because, you know, I was a child actor. So I started when I was three and I didn't know that I would have a real life. You know, there was that impulse to try to take away from me. And I had to fight for it. You know, I had to fight for normal things. I went to college. I had other interests. I loved to travel, not having anything to do with movies. And I just felt that if I didn't have a real life that was grounded in like all the things that people care about, like showing up for your friends or, you know, all the things that are part of who we are, that I wouldn't have anything to say as an actor. So I had to kind of guard it with my life.