[ Speaking French ] Aah!

Stop fooling around and stop these horses.

Narrator: For a long time, she was mistakenly introduced as Franco-American or as a New Yorker.

This serious, intelligent actor had to be from elsewhere.

Jodie Foster, however, was born in Hollywood.

An actor before she could read, she is the direct descendant of the Great Image Factory but also its most special child, who has resisted the celebrity circus decade after decade.

Foster: If you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you'd had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe then you, too, might value privacy above all else.

♪♪ Narrator: This has not stopped Jodie Foster from becoming one of the most influential icons of the system, in front of and behind the camera.

This is the story of a battle carried out from within against the entertainment industry by a woman determined to keep control of her image.

And one of these days, I'd love to play, like, one of those James Dean pictures where I could be James Dean.

That'd be fun.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Interviewer: Is Los Angeles a terrible place to grow up?

No, it isn't.

It's a very difficult place to grow up.

I don't think most people there are grown up.

I don't think most people anywhere are grown up.

But let's just say in Los Angeles, they're having a rougher time about it.

I mean, there's the beach.

It's a leisure community.

It's like Pittsburgh is a steel town.

Everyone talks steel.

Well, in Los Angeles, everyone talks movies.

And that's not a real grown-up thing to talk about, I guess.

I grew up on Cahuenga.

I think we're very close by.

My mom, she did not like us being on the boulevard, as you can imagine, in the '70s.

So, she would say, "If I ever catch you on Hollywood Boulevard, don't ever come home."

Narrator: In Jodie Foster's oldest memories, the images of Los Angeles are mixed up with the cinema that's made there.

These are the frozen plains of the tundra and the face of Omar Sharif, which appear on the giant screen of the drive-in, where, at the age of three, she falls asleep, wrapped up in a sleeping bag.

Announcer: This is "Doctor Zhivago."

Narrator: It's the first film that her mother, Evelyn Foster, known as Brandy, takes her to see.

A cinephile, Brandy dreams for her four children a future as accomplished as these Hollywood icons.

She arrived here after the war, attracted by the Californian promise.

But in 1962, with the birth of Jodie, her youngest child, Brandy divorces her philandering husband and moves to the foot of the hills amongst the aspiring stars and dreams of greatness.

She's now working in what we call "the industry" as a press officer.

And as is normal here, she attends castings with her son Buddy, hoping he'll make it as a child actor.

How did you get into the acting business?

Was it your parents' idea?

How little were you when you started?

Well, I was three when I started.

Three?

Yeah, I was three.

You said to your folks, "Hey, I think I'll go down for an audition this morning"?

No, I had always been a ham, and they left me out in the car and they said, "You know, this is a bad neighborhood, so you better come in," because my brother was going on a commercial.

And I came in and they said, "You know, come on."

I was following my brother.

My mother said, "You know, come back here."

They said, "No, it's all right."

I started taking off my shirt and saying hi and flexing my muscles.

You were three years old?

I got the job.

Yeah, I was a big ham.

What was the commercial?

Coppertone, for Coppertone.

I was the original little Coppertone kid.

You were?

Yeah.

I got my pants pulled down.

By the doggy?

That's right.

Announcer: Get a deep, dark, long-lasting tan.

Get enriched.

Coppertone.

Narrator: From her first appearance, Jodie Foster's more than a miniature muse.

She becomes an avatar for the American way of life.

Jenny, now tell him where you hid his marbles.

In the dishwasher.

Now, was that so hard to admit?

Narrator: Going from casting to casting, Jodie enters into this industry, where they make feel-good fiction by the kilometer and where they celebrate good, American family values or nostalgia for the Wild West.

♪♪ Cousin Rich, my dollies-- Money?

Can you keep a secret?

And somewhere between acting and playing, Jodie grows up in the background of mainstream programs watched by millions of Americans.

I'm six going on seven, Mr.

Cartwright.

Foster: I was a full TV baby.

You know, I was always in the business.

I don't remember not being in the business, so I kind of don't really remember my life before acting.

Interpreter: She comes from the tradition of child stars, a Hollywood tradition that has existed since the beginning of cinema.

Obviously, it's her mother who realized that her children could become breadwinners.

Stage mothers are also an American tradition.

There have even been films made about them, such as Visconti's "Bellissima."

I don't think it's right.

It's not stealing.

Narrator: The maternal enterprise is doing well.

With her pretty, blonde face, husky voice and her reliability, Jodie soon lands the Holy Grail, a Disney contract that starts with a part in "Napoleon and Samantha."

Want to meet him?

Yeah!

Real live lion!

His name is Major.

Think I could come in and pet him?

Come on in.

During filming, she learns the ropes and realizes that movie sets aren't playgrounds but marketplaces where everybody's trading themselves.

He won't hurt you.

Pet him.

Rich: I remember her once saying that when she would go to the movies with her friends in high school, they could, like, throw popcorn down from the balcony or throw things on the screen.

And she was always aware she couldn't do that, because then she might get blacklisted and not be able to get her next job.

It's a company town.

And, um, I, I know that her mother had a lot of friends who were in the Communist Party, and she saw them blacklisted during McCarthyism.

She had a very acute sense of how you couldn't step out of line, how you had to be really careful.

My real name is Miss Alicia Patricia Ingram.

Narrator: At the start of the 1970s, Jodi's name now appears on the credits of popular series such as "Kung Fu," but, more importantly, she shoulders a heavy responsibility.

Her brother Buddy's television career is stalling, and it's Jodi's fees that provide for the whole family.

When you're raised in the system, you're aware of the codes, I think, and you're aware of kind of going outside the box of being, you know, the "traditional" childhood star -- cute, smiley.

There's a kind of wisdom and intelligence about her that goes beyond her age.

And if you look at her career, she always figured out how to kind of go around the system a little to do kind of her own thing and constantly reinvent her identity.

♪♪ Narrator: She has outgrown the cardboard sets of Western movies.

She's about to move into adolescence, which is often fatal for young actors.

Fortunately, Hollywood is undergoing a transition at the same time as Jodie.

A burgeoning, new generation of directors is imposing a more subversive idea of the world.

One of them is Martin Scorsese, who reveals in a small part a very different Jodie.

Ow!

Ow!

Are you all right?

Oh, my knee!

What happened?

Oh, there's a slick spot on your floor.

Oh, I hope this doesn't ruin my tryout for cheerleader.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Maybe, uh, maybe you just stumbled.

[ Chuckles ] Thank you very much, sir.

Good luck on your cheerleading, huh?

You started to have maverick auteurs, young directors like Scorsese or like Peter Bogdanovich or George Lucas, and these directors coming in and starting to make more auteur films at the time.

This is in -- I'm talking about the early '70s.

Rich: Jodie Foster comes up in this moment.

Or maybe it's more accurate to say that Jodie Foster's mother comes up in this moment because that's who's choosing the roles for her daughter.

But the two of them come into the Hollywood machine at I think it was a really auspicious time for what the mother was looking for and what Jodie Foster could deliver in her persona.

You tell Tommy I said goodbye, huh?

So long, suckers!

Doris!

[ Door closes ] And we had, you know, a politically liberal environment with very sort of good morals, good ethics kind of thing.

Narrator: Brandy Foster is not your average stage mother.

As well as taking her kids to numerous castings, she also takes them to see French New Wave films, which she's crazy about.

That is, when she's not dragging them along to rallies for the rights of ethnic and sexual minorities.

Rich: The '70s is the time of the rise of the women's movement and feminism.

And so, these two currents kind of come together, these social changes coming out of the civil rights movement, out of the gay-pride movement, out of the women's movement, and then, at the same time, meeting it not quite halfway, Hollywood coming out of this old guild model of how films get made in an industry.

Narrator: Since their dad left the family home, the Foster children have not just been raised by Brandy, but also by Josephine Dominguez, who shares Brandy's life.

They call her Auntie Jo, and it's from her first name and the initial of her surname that the youngest one gets her nickname.

Foster: I went to a French school, Lycée Français de Los Angeles.

Shalit: In Los Angeles?

In Los Angeles.

All my studies were in French, except for, I think, English and sports, maybe.

And sometimes sports was in French, too.

So, it's the sort of very, very rigid classical system of France, which I think is the best in the world.

Shalit: Why did your mother send you to a French school particularly?

Did she have some affinity for that culture?

Foster: Well, yes, she did, I guess.

She, you know, had always wanted to go to France, and I think she had gone the year before.

Narrator: Raised under the auspices of French sophistication, the young star is preparing for a future away from the screen.

Pursuing such a hazardous career is out of the question.

♪♪ The last thing she's expecting is an offer to sweep away everything she thought she knew about the industry and even life.

When Scorsese offers her the role of a prostitute, mother and daughter face an aesthetic, moral, and political dilemma.

Is that really a wise choice of role for a 12-year-old child?

[ Tires screeching ] Foster: I couldn't figure it out, either.

You know, he called me up, and I had my uniform on with my knee socks.

Me and my mother walked in purposely with my uniform on, and he said, "Well, you know, that's fine.

Terrific."

I'm going, "Come on.

Me?"

And I'm an actress, you know.

That's what I'm supposed to be there for.

Mintzer: The fact that she was soon cast in Scorsese's film, "Taxi Driver," especially, that was a way of taking this kind of cute TV star and completely remaking her, especially in "Taxi Driver," as a young prostitute.

And I think that was, you know, pretty daring casting on the part of Scorsese to do in the film.

But it also showed that I think Jodie Foster, even at a young age, there was a desire to get out of this television kind of Hollywood, television world and to go into something more auteur and more artistic.

You go talk to him.

His name is Matthew.

I'll be over there waiting for you.

Okay.

♪ I went to Chinatown to buy some... ♪ Your name Matthew?

Narrator: Trusting in the director's vision, Jodie dons the two small outfits of Iris, a young runaway that a taxi driver attempts to rescue from the sidewalks of Harlem before descending into madness.

Come on.

Goux: There are no scenes where you see her in a sordid situation.

What is sordid in "Taxi Driver" is a situation in the way that Harvey Keitel, her pimp, sells her.

The dialogue with Travis is very crude, very violent, etcetera.

So, the spectator's imagination projects onto a character who's always filmed as an innocent.

I don't like my real name.

Oh, what's your real name?

Iris.

I guess there had been some, you know, problems with the Welfare Board wondering if I was going to be sane after finishing this movie.

And, uh, Bobby and Marty took me to the place.

You know, they thought they were going to block the whole thing out, and Bobby just took on the aura of the director.

I said, "Okay, okay."

"Now, the thing is, is what he wants you to do is he wants you to, like, you know, take down my fly and, uh, and then, you know, put yourself in a certain position."

I said, "Uh, do I do that now?"

And then both of them at the same time went, "No!"

And I think that's a testament to the fact that he is perhaps the poorest teacher of sexuality for young children.

Is he calling you names?

He called you a little piece of chicken.

Narrator: Half adult, half child, Iris personifies an era hesitating between Disney's childlike innocence and the disenchantment of the counterculture.

Jodie's discovering a world whose existence the old Hollywood was hiding from her, a paranoid and violent world personified by Travis Bickle.

♪♪ ♪♪ So, it's under this new and scandalous guise that Jodie reveals herself to the demanding public at the Cannes Film Festival and to the eyes of the whole world.

[ Speaking French ] [ Speaking French ] Man: Président du jury, Monsieur Tennessee Williams... [ Speaking French ] Man: La Palme d'Or de Festival International de film Cannes 1976.

[ Man speaking French ] "Taxi Driver."

[ Crowd boos ] ♪♪ [ Speaking French ] Narrator: This pursuit of subversion pushes her to appear in "Bugsy Malone" the same year, more frivolous than "Taxi Driver" and more unsettling.

This gangster movie, played by children, shows her as the leading showgirl, surrounded by dancing girls, displayed like little dolls.

♪ My name is Tallulah ♪ ♪ My first rule of thumb ♪ ♪ I don't say where I'm going or where I'm coming from ♪ ♪ I try to leave a little reputation behind me ♪ Goux: The three movies which establish her globally are "Bugsy Malone," "Taxi Driver" and "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane."

Those are three very ambiguous parts about sexualized children.

But hey, it's also the fashion of the time.

She's not the only one.

She's part of a wave, a wave of nymphets.

In her wake, there will be Brooke Shields, who's going to star in "Pretty Baby."

In America in the '70s, this is still rather surprising.

Even though it's a puritanical country, it's still living its sexual revolution.

And the sexual revolution is also expressed via children.

Narrator: Not quite 15, Jodie suddenly finds herself shrouded in a transgressive thrill, which turns her into an "it" girl.

America gets passionate about her, even Andy Warhol, who's mesmerized by this creature caught between two ages.

♪♪ Interviewer: At 14 1/2, with the character of a boxer and already 12 films, this is Jodie Foster from "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane" and "Taxi Driver," an American girl from the French High School in LA.

during the shooting of Eric Le Hung's "Stop Calling Me Baby!"

Is it easy to survive in the movies when you're 14 1/2?

[ Speaking French ] Why is the film called "Blue Flower" in French?

Interpreter: Because she's a little, blue flower, a little poppy who's bloomed in the fields of the city.

Is it similar to "Lolita"?

Oh, no, no, no.

Because with her little romantic soul, she's thinking, excuse the expression, "I'd like to bite into the apple."

♪♪ Narrator: Courted by French cinema, Jodie dreams of equaling Truffaut's heroines, which she and her mother dreamt about.

However, nymphets are now trendy on this side of the Atlantic, too.

[ Singing in French ] [ Singing in French ] ♪♪ ♪♪ At best, here she is transformed into the sweetheart of Giscardian France.

At worst, she's an imported commodity to be consumed on the spot.

You know, adolescence is always so fraught for child actors.

Most of them never come out the other side.

So, as she goes into adolescence, you see this thing happening, where it's almost like she's splitting herself.

She manages to navigate it, I think, without being demeaned, without kind of being crushed underfoot.

It's almost as though she has her own backstory as an actor.

Hi.

I'm Jodie Foster, and if you're like me, you're going through those awkward years between 13 and 18, when everything seems wrong.

Believe me, as cute as I am, I know how it feels to hate your body and wish you could trade it in for somebody else's.

Jodie's right, guys and gals.

What you need at this age is Rothko's amazing new Puberty Helper.

Just one single application is enough to cover a full five years of agony.

Hi.

Hi, yourself.

Who do you have... Narrator: Alternatively Lolita and spokesperson for the Mickey Mouse Club, Jodie plays her multiple facets and precocity with derision.

Happy birthday, Mickey.

You look good for 50.

By placing her at the center of media attention, did her mother, Brandy, really create a dream childhood for her?

Annabel: No way!

In "Freaky Friday," Jodie plays a teenager in conflict with her mother.

Annabel: ...which my mother says is ridiculous because I'm not completely mature in my figure yet.

I wish I could switch places with her I wish I could switch places with her for just one day.

for just one day.

Narrator: In this fantasy comedy about a body switch, it's difficult not to see a reflection of the symbiotic relationship Jodie has with Brandy, who is both Svengali and an eternal reflection of her.

Annabel: And her stomach and her, uh, uh... Wow!

Interviewer: Who decides what you'll do next, in fact?

My mother and my agent and myself.

And in the end, yourself or equal votes?

Well, everything my mother thinks about a script I always think the same thing.

Only she knows everything.

I know half, and she knows everything.

So, we always agree, anyway.

Rich: I know that Jodie Foster says that her mother wanted her to go into the movies because she could have, you know, equal opportunity in a way to the men.

But it's hard to think that that's really the case, given the way women have been treated in Hollywood and in the movies around the world.

This was the 1970s.

Um, so I don't know if that idea is accurate or maybe her mother thought so.

Narrator: Jodie exits her teenage years, having avoided the pitfalls of early exposure.

Her popularity is intact, as is her clearheadedness, despite the false pretenses of show business.

Interviewer: Do you have a steady boyfriend?

No.

No.

I don't have time.

What kind of fellow would you like, really?

When you do have time to get around to that?

Huh.

I don't know.

I suppose I would like somebody who understood my business and who would be able to understand that when someone, when you're on camera and someone comes up to you and says, "Jodie, you're beautiful" that it doesn't mean anything.

[ Indistinct chatter ] We're walking!

Oh, no!

God, you know what I hate about this place?

When some place is too small, you can never find anything.

♪ In and out of love ♪ Narrator: Jodie once said, "When Californians have problems, they don't talk about it.

They go to the beach."

She says goodbye to that superficial world with "Foxes," the portrait of a young woman disappointed by the promise of Los Angeles.

A bright student, she leaves for Yale and turns her back on Hollywood and the big screens on which America saw her grow up.

Shalit: What was on your mind when you first went to Yale?

Foster: To be like everybody else.

I suppose coming from the kind of experiences that I had, I wanted to sort of fit in and be accepted by my peers.

Narrator: But someone followed her from Hollywood to campus to brutally bring her back under the media spotlight on March 31st, 1981.

Mr.

President!

[ Gun firing ] Man: Back up, back up!

Get him out!

Chancellor: Good evening.

President Reagan is in good condition tonight in a Washington hospital after several hours of emergency surgery.

John W. Hinckley Jr., accused of the shootings, was interviewed by a psychiatrist, while the prosecutors looked into letters he wrote to actress Jodie Foster in search of a motive.

Anchor: More evidence of Hinckley's obsession about Jodie Foster.

Just last month, he returned again to New Haven and stuffed notes under her door.

Interpreter: In his message addressed to Jodie Foster, Hinckley says, "I've got to do something now.

I hope to change your mind about me.

This letter is being written an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel.

I love you forever.

John Hinckley."

Due to my profession as an actress, I've often been contacted by strangers.

I've never met, spoken to, or in any way associated with one John W. Hinckley.

Goux: John Hinckley is a young man from a respectable family, someone who doesn't really know what to do with his life.

But he has a secret dream, which is to make music because he's a fan of the Beatles and particularly John Lennon.

Like so many others, he dreams about being famous above all else.

While wandering aimlessly, he walks into a cinema and sees "Taxi Driver" for the first time at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

He will go on to watch the film 15 times in a row and starts developing an obsession with Jodie Foster.

He wants to exist in the eyes of Jodie Foster, who for him is just an image.

So, I think that he also wanted to become an image.

He tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan on the day of the Academy Awards ceremony, and when he was arrested by the police, he said, "Will they cancel the Academy Awards tonight now?"

And they did.

This is crazy.

Narrator: America is stunned.

The man America elected to restore its greatness came close to death because a man reenacted "Taxi Driver" out of love for Jodie Foster.

Caught in a media storm, Jodie wrestles with public opinion, which assigns her an absurd role.

She's at the same time the prey of a madman and an accomplice to his actions.

This question of why she is the one that somebody would cathect to.

That is still a question, I think.

And I'm not sure how much it was her, quite frankly.

Maybe it was Robert De Niro who he was really cathected to.

I mean, this is the person who was the alter ego on screen being obsessed with her.

I love him.

♪♪ Today, defense lawyers plan to ask the judge to let the jury see the movie "Taxi Driver."

Mintzer: Don't forget, also, that "Taxi Driver" itself was inspired by all the assassinations that happened in the 1960s -- John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King.

But then, in the '70s, that kind of stopped for a bit, and things calmed down on that level.

And so, when it happened again in '81, it was quite a big shock to the United States.

Jodie Foster suddenly was thrown into the middle of this huge national disaster.

As far as I was concerned, there's no message in "Taxi Driver."

It is a piece of fiction.

I'm an actress, and that's what I love doing, and that's what I'm good at.

And nothing will ever change that.

But I do know that I think of myself much differently than what other people think of me.

I feel very young.

I feel very young.

Narrator: Jodie was aiming for normality, but she plunges into an exhausting notoriety.

Hunted by the press, put under the protection of the FBI, she discovers a new adversary -- the cult of celebrity, a symptom of a narcissistic and voyeuristic era that stole her image.

♪♪ Shalit: In the autobiographical piece you wrote for Esquire, talking about the Hinckley case, you said "That kind of pain doesn't go away.

It's something you never understand, forgive or forget.

It's a pain that can never be healed."

Is it still with you?

Uh, yeah, generally, I don't like to talk about this because it just rehashes, you know, a lot of violent attitudes within this society.

And every time it comes out, you know, more of that comes through.

Um, of course it is.

Man: In less than an hour, one of these young ladies you're looking at now will be... Narrator: While Jodie licks her wounds behind the scenes, America of the 1980s is reinventing itself in the best of health -- strong, rich, and above all, plastically flawless.

And the winner is Michelle Marie Pfeiffer, number 23 in Orange County.

♪♪ If America had a woman's body, it would be that of Kim Basinger or Michelle Pfeiffer.

So many blondes guaranteeing a new, more outrageous glamour.

Man: Claude Chabrol is currently shooting "The Blood of Others," an adaptation based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir.

Narrator: After finishing her studies, Jodie doesn't give up the big screen.

But as Hollywood has now been colonized beyond recognition by Stallone and Schwarzenegger, she ventures back to her second homeland.

[ Speaking French ] [ Reporter speaking French ] [ Speaking French ] [ Speaking French ] [ Reporter speaking French ] [ Speaking French ] She understood the system enough, perhaps, to not be afraid to do things that you're not supposed to do, which is turning down movies.

It's also a time when she's trying to find herself and who she wants to be as an actor.

And her world really is much more Hollywood.

But she tries many different things in this period to figure out what position she wants to have in films, what she wants to do.

It's way up there, yeah.

Yeah, it's right up there with "beak face."

Narrator: In the industry or in fringe productions like "Five Corners," Jodie is looking for the right story to address what has haunted her since the Hinckley affair -- predators and the looks and judgments which expropriate her image.

[ Breathing heavily ] Then she goes to audition for "The Accused."

They made her audition.

They didn't want to hire her.

She finally managed to get the part.

And then, of course, this becomes her big breakthrough back into films.

IUD.

When was your last period?

Show me your hands, please.

Narrator: At the end of the '80s, Jodie fights to get a role based on a news item -- the battle of a gang-rape victim to convict her attackers.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven days.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] Are you gonna examine me?

Narrator: A good basis for a new character -- hers.

Authentic and ready to strike.

Before the incident, when was your last intercourse?

[ Camera shutter clicks ] Turn around.

Mintzer: Something about her becoming a victim, being victimized by this whole story, victimized by, you know, being the target of this guy who was writing her letters.

and I think in the rest of her career, she's going to absolutely play characters who are going to be fighting back and who are going to escape this victimhood.

Go, go, go!

Oh, yeah!

You lose.

All right, maybe next time.

Hey, knock it off.

Foster: You know, female history is fraught with victims.

And the truth is, is that if I only played Wonder Woman, it would just be a very false statement.

I'm standing there with my pants down and my crotch hung out for the world to see.

And three guys are sticking it to me!

Human cruelty is a very illogical thing.

And then suddenly we see that she's being really cruelly brutalized because she's something wonderful and something powerful.

And that's what's frightening about the crime itself is the dehumanization, the objectification of it.

It's not just a crime upon women.

It's a crime upon the underdog.

[ Engine revs ] [ Tires screeching ] [ Metal, glass crashing ] Announcer: Live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, the motion-picture capital of the world, It's the 61st annual Academy Awards.

Some of the early arrivals here for the 61st annual Academy Awards, best actress nominee tonight Jodie Foster.

The Oscar goes to... Jodie Foster, "The Accused."

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ Narrator: That triumph causes a breach in Hollywood's lockdown system.

In a hostile environment, Jodie has found a political role worthy of her.

Um...this is such a big deal, and my life is so simple.

So, Chris, got any questions?

[ Laughs ] About the last choice?

Man: Being an intellectual and the fact that you don't live in Hollywood, I wonder if you're -- Yes, I do!

Well, I live in the Valley now.

But don't we all?

I grew up in Hollywood, right smack in the middle there, right next to the Hollywood Bowl.

Narrator: While nearly everybody has forgotten about the child star she was, Jodie once more becomes Hollywood's prodigious disciple.

Woman: What kind of projects are you going to be looking for now?

Something similar or something completely different from this?

It's so hard to find good material out there.

It always makes me laugh when women say, "Oh, there's no good material for women."

There is no good material for anybody, and it's very rare when it comes around.

And even when something's remotely good and you believe in it enough, you've got to work on it.

So, that's what I'm working on, is finding something that's moving and good, and I have no idea what that's going to be.

Narrator: When Jonathan Demme adapts Thomas Harris' gory bestseller, he's initially thinking to cast his muse, Michelle Pfeiffer.

But Jodie Foster is keen to impose herself, if only as a second choice.

With "The Silence of the Lambs," she found a subject to continue her catharsis.

Good morning.

Dr.

Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling.

May I speak with you?

Demme: Jodie said "For me, this is a story about one young woman who is trying to save the life of another young woman, and she will do anything in order to achieve that goal."

And as I sat there, I thought, "That is such a great theme."

That's such a great directorial orientation on this movie.

Thank you, Jodie.

Foster: It was making of a hero I think that really got to me, this idea of creating a hero, a female hero, unlike any other female hero that's ever been done before.

I think there's a responsibility for some people, certainly, to work within the system to change the system.

Man: You?

And yeah, possibly.

Definitely.

I mean, I want to make movies where there are female role models that 14-year-old boys want to see and that 15-year-old girls want to see.

But in "Silence of the Lambs," there's also a certain victimhood to her character at first because she's this like little, short... She's short, right?

So, she's a short woman.

And there's a lot of scenes where Jonathan Demme kind of frames her against all these men standing around, and she's like a little kid there.

And yet she's the one who's going to kind of take the power in that scene.

In another scene, she's eventually going to claim her power, as well.

Closer.

What's amazing in that film is she's helped, she's assisted in claiming that power by a serial killer.

But it's also because you have the feeling that Hannibal Lecter doesn't have the same male gaze that regular men have.

Narrator: The real menace of the film isn't Hannibal Lecter but the looks surrounding Clarice.

First, the looks from men full of contempt, lust, or even respect.

Three notions mingling in the emotionless eyes of the cannibal.

I heard a strange noise.

What was it?

It was... screaming.

Some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.

What did you do?

[ Panting ] Narrator: But those looks don't belong to just one genre.

Those are the looks placed upon Foster, the actor, who's been installed on the stage since the dawn of her life and from which she breaks free better than ever in "The Silence of the Lambs."

♪♪ Interpreter: As expected, the "Silence of the Lambs" scoops them all.

"The Silence of the Lambs."

Best picture, best director, best actor, best actress.

What more could you ask for?

It was feared that gay demonstrators protesting about Hollywood's misrepresentation of them would interfere with the smooth running of the evening.

It didn't, which is a shame, as it could have livened things up a little.

Stop Hollywood homophobia!

Narrator: A controversy has indeed tarnished the ceremony.

For weeks, militants from Queer Nation have been attacking the film from one newspaper and magazine column to another.

For them, the serial killer who's been hunted by Clarice Starling demonizes the transgender community.

Rich: But they do not attack Jonathan Demme, the very sweet director.

They do not attack Ted Tally, the screenwriter.

They do not attack Ted Levine, who creates this persona.

No, they attack Jodie Foster.

They attack Jodie Foster because they conflate it with outing her.

They conflate it with trying to force her to be open about her sexuality, which has long been rumored to be lesbian.

And they put posters all around New York City.

I think really it was 90% misogyny.

And for the rest, it had some politics.

For me, misdirected politics.

Narrator: In the great war of images, however, Jodie has just won the first battle, turning an ordinary-looking woman into a mythical heroine.

And though still in her 20s, the actor with a 27-year-career is about to throw Hollywood off balance once more to realize an old dream.

♪♪ Interpreter: Her technical knowledge is totally mind-blowing.

Like the extremely brilliant and smart girl that she is, she follows the filming like an assistant.

That's pretty amazing.

Woman: What was the director's name?

"Bugsy Malone"?

Alan Parker.

Alan Parker.

Since then, he's done "Fame" and "Midnight Express."

Yes.

And he said that if he got sick, you could have taken over from him and finished.

That's nice of him to say that.

Did you read that?

Yeah, I did read that.

That's really nice of him.

Foster: I can't say I really wanted to be an actor when I grew up.

I was really hoping to be a director.

So, my whole life, pretty much I was thinking about what that would be, you know?

Fred: It's funny because I think I can even remember being born.

For the first two weeks of my life, I didn't have a name.

Dede couldn't make up her mind.

[ Foster speaking French ] Narrator: Switching to directing is a principle that has long been adopted by her male colleagues but which is far from obvious for an actress.

♪♪ Twenty-four.

[ Ding ] Man: That is correct, Damon.

In a way, it's her own story.

It's about a very gifted child and how that gifted child is going to try to be normal in a world where it's hard for talented children.

Narrator: Just like her new Hollywood models, Jodie adopts artisanal methods and not only becomes a director but also a producer and distributor through her company, Egg Pictures.

Jodie Foster is one of the first to do that and to create her company and to say, "I'm going to control the content" is the term we use today, "and I'm going to find books to adapt or find scripts, and I'm going to develop them."

Narrator: Outside the independent path she treads as a director, Jodie is aware that to ensure her freedom to operate, she needs to carry on fulfilling her role as a star.

[ Speaking French ] [ Speaking French ] A quarter of a century after "Gunsmoke," she doesn't hesitate to dive back into mainstream entertainment, returning to the Wild West opposite a kamikaze Mel Gibson or as Richard Gere's sidekick.

I had to go all the way to Virginia!

Your Majesty, promise me.

Promise me... In the most traditional codes of femininity, she encounters male icons one after the other that she's looking at and that are looking back at her.

In the mid-1990s.

Jodie never stops climbing up the Hollywood hierarchy.

Perfect teeth and the front page of glossy magazines -- enough to earn the requisite credits for a great, new role as a woman alone against the crowd... a scientist dealing with the entertainment industry, deaf to the messages that she's bringing back from the cosmos.

Man: Are these the kind of people that you want talking to your God for you?

Crowd: No!

"Contact" is an example of Jodie Foster doing, you know, playing a role that you think would be reserved for a man.

Again, I think Jodie Foster opened the way for women to take more and more leading roles in big Hollywood movies, and to the point today where it's completely normal to have a woman leading a film.

[ Static crackling ] Narrator: In an age saturated with the buzz of the media, the researcher listens to her own intuition.

Jodie can relate to the eerie material as if she had co-written the movie herself.

[ Foster speaking French ] ♪♪ The world has entered the millennial era, and Jodie has entered a dangerous era for any actress, her 40s.

A house besieged by predators, walls equipped with omnipresent eyes, a child to protect... In David Fincher's "Panic Room," she overcomes every challenge in her path.

From her childhood on celluloid to the over-mediatized scandals, she also appears to have lived her life and her work inside a panoptic prison, similar to the one in "Panic Room."

♪♪ ♪♪ It's become like her stock in trade.

The poor, fragile creature who's going to fight against evil either in "Panic Room" or in "Flight Plan."

It's similar to the principle of rape and revenge.

A victim is going to take revenge on her assailants.

In "The Brave One," she reprises Charles Bronson's role.

She becomes the vigilante of "Death Wish," and it's as though she has come full circle with "Taxi Driver," which was already an homage to "Death Wish."

[ Gun fires ] Interpreter: Many actresses complain about the fact that Hollywood is a relatively macho world, that past the age of 40, the leading roles, female leading roles, become scarce -- interesting leading roles.

[ Speaking French ] Narrator: When Jodie goes back behind the camera for "The Beaver," she hasn't directed in 15 years.

Hollywood doesn't want to hear about her biopic on Leni Riefenstahl, the Third Reich's filmmaker, nor her other projects, considered difficult.

♪♪ She then gambles on Mel Gibson's captivating aura, with whom she maintains a strange and paradoxical friendship, the most controversial actor at the time.

Interpreter: They met 17 years ago filming "Maverick," and even though they haven't worked together since, they've stayed friends against all odds.

Narrator: Long suspected of homophobia and anti-Semitism, Gibson is accused of domestic violence during the filming.

Faithful to their friendship, Jodie refuses to renounce him.

The film is panned without further ado.

Not him.

♪♪ Not tonight.

♪♪ Gervais: They actually gave me a list of rules.

I'm going to ignore them, but I thought it'd be good to read them out.

Okay?

This is real.

And I mustn't mention Mel Gibson this year.

Not his private life, his politics, his recent films, and especially not Jodie Foster's "Beaver."

[ Laughter ] Um...I haven't seen it myself.

Um... [ Applause ] I've spoken to a lot of guys here.

They haven't seen it, either.

But that doesn't mean it's not any good.

Narrator: Criticized the same year for her collaboration with Roman Polanski, Jodie sees the grip of the media and Internet tightening around her.

A longtime figure of progressivism, she's now being criticized for her silence on her sexual orientation and for her disreputable collaborations.

How can she fend off the attacks?

Man: Jodie Foster.

[ Cheers and applause ] During a tribute to her at the 2013 Golden Globes, Jodie knows that Hollywood is awaiting its collateral.

Well, I am, uh...single.

[ Laughter ] Yes, I am.

I am single.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age, in those, uh... [ Cheers and applause ] ...those very quaint days, when a fragile, young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers, and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met.

But now, apparently, I'm told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a primetime reality show.

Rich: I think she does belong to an earlier era of Hollywood, when you could not be open about your sexuality.

But it's also something she would have known from every audition she ever went to, every casting she ever went to.

If these men think you won't [Censored] them, then they won't hire you.

I don't think she was wrong.

And then what changes?

What changes is a wonderfully uncompromising gay movement, queer movement that says everyone must come out or nothing will change.

So, she's caught in a way between generations.

Narrator: Instead of the expected coming out, Jodie announces the requirement of transparency from an increasingly shameless society and refuses to bow to the pressure.

Man: Here he is, the Wizard of Wall Street himself, Lee Gates.

♪ Money ain't funny, and it keep comin' ♪ Narrator: In directing "Money Monster," a satire on the financial sector corrupted by show business, she's criticizing the same old diktat.

This is 2016, at the dawn of the election of a businessman and trashy reality-TV star.

Thank you very much.

The name is Lee Gates.

The show is "Money Monster."

The day is Friday, and the Dow has dropped a seismic seven points this morning.

Jodie, as the guest of the show, you may go first.

Choose wisely.

[ Laughter ] Good luck, good luck, good luck.

You know what the name of my company was.

Oh, that's right.

Egg Pictures.

Whoo!

Narrator: Far from disappearing into thin air, like Garbo in her day, Jodie continues playing the game like a trouper on "The Tonight Show" and elsewhere.

When the MeToo wave arrives, there's no need for her to open up.

Her feminism is elsewhere, in her well-documented refusal to be treated like a puppet, or in the way she fights at the heart of the system, or when she puts herself forward to direct some major Netflix series.

Love...feeling.

You have a recommendation, so Sarah will be part of our trial period.

Well, it's been tested, though, right?

Of course.

In "Black Mirror," she tells the story of a camera transplanted into a little girl's brain.

Forty years after "Freaky Friday," she takes hold of the relationship between mother and daughter, as if to free herself of the Svengali mother that Brandy was.

She, too, for better and for worse, had linked her daughter's fate to an omnipresent eye.

♪♪ I think it's possible to see Jodie Foster's career, at least most of it, in terms of a trajectory of greater empowerment and greater agency of a kind of maybe soft feminism.

But if that's the case, what does it mean that now she seems to take parts in science-fiction movies that only in science-fiction can we look to a time when women her age can actually have a place of power, continue to be employed.

...into a suburban area?

Mind you, I've never been killed before in a film, so... Well...I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Narrator: But science-fiction is also the genre of cross-dressing par excellence, which allows her to mutate into an evil character, to disappear, or to make herself look excessively older when digital rejuvenation is the norm for other actresses.

Hello.

How can I help?

Yeah, I got two rooms left.

She has not lost sight of her objective... to continue to impose her stories, to rub Hollywood up the wrong way, yet, at the same time, being at the heart of the system, and to take her stories all the way to the podium.

Because cinema is the best weapon Jodie Foster has found to escape the entertainment culture.

There might be a paradox here or an implacable logic.

There's no better way to reclaim control of an image than by inventing other images stronger and more accurate.

Foster: I don't know if you guys know this, but I grew up probably ten blocks from here off Cahuenga and had to pass this street every day as I was on my way to school, and my mother told us that if she ever found us on Hollywood Boulevard, we shouldn't bother coming home.

Narrator: Raised in the promised land of souls in search of fame, by and large, she has remained faithful to it, and the movie business has fully appreciated that.

Quentin Tarantino immortalizes the child prodigy in all its truth in a nostalgic fable on the greatest idol factory.

Since Jodie has never been able to escape Hollywood, she has carved her name there to change it forever.

What are you reading?

It's a biography of Walt Disney.

It's fascinating.

He's a genius, you know?

I mean, a once-in-every-50- or-100-years kind of genius.

What are you, 12?

I'm eight.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪