Jodie Foster recalls seeing a lot of herself in fellow queer actor Kristen Stewart when they worked together early in Stewart's career.
Foster — who was nominated for an Oscar for Nyad and won an Emmy for True Detective: Night Country in 2024, and is starring in a new French film, A Private Life — sat down for an interview with Variety, where she was asked to match some of her famous movie quotes with the projects they're from.
In the interview, Foster was asked about the 2002 thriller Panic Room and what it was like to work with Stewart on the movie. Panic Room, directed by David Fincher, stars Foster and Stewart as a mother and daughter who must hide in a panic room when their new home is invaded by three men. It was Stewart's third film in her career, and one of her first big breaks.
"The second I met Kristen Stewart, I was like, 'Oh, she's my mini-me.' I just absolutely loved her."
Foster recalled how she came onto the film as a last-minute replacement for Nicole Kidman, "like a week before filming."
"And so, there was just something just amazing that I had just kind of fallen into this role where I got to be Kristen's mom," Foster says. "And then we seemed so alike. We had the same haircut! I spent so much time with this kid at 11 years old in this tiny little room that was 8 feet by 14 feet, and I have never enjoyed being stuck in a closet with a person as much as with Kristen Stewart as a kid."
Foster said the two would talk about music, and that Stewart thought U2 was a "boy band."
"I always was like, 'she's gonna be so great when she grows up. But she's not gonna be an actor, right? Because she doesn'thave that personality. She's not somebody who wants to put a lampshade on her head, and she doesn't want to sing for Grandma or be the center of attention."
"So, I'm still shocked to this day that she's an actor. But now she's a director, so who knows, she might be moving into her hyphenate."
Speaking of the closet, Stewart formally came out in 2017 during a monologue on Saturday Light Live. In her Variety cover story, Foster also addressed her famous 2013 Golden Globes speech that many took as a coming out.
"It was really important that it be so literary," Foster says of the speech and her references to her ex-partner Cydney Bernard, “because I knew that it would be chopped up, misinterpreted. I wanted there to be a document for 20 years from now, my kids to go back to."Watch the interview below.
