Two-time Oscar-winner Jodie Foster (The Silence of the Lambs, The Accused) isn’t the first actress that comes to mind when producers are looking to cast a family-friendly adventure comedy. Foster’s known for dramatic roles and has only been connected to a couple of comedies since leaving her adolescent ‘Disney’ years behind. But now Foster’s found lighter fare with a starring role in the big screen adaptation of Nim’s Island, based on the bestselling children’s book by Wendy Orr.
Foster plays writer Alexandra Rover, a woman who writes adventure tales but hates to leave her own apartment. While researching her current book, she makes contact via email with a little girl named Nim who’s all alone on a remote island. Nim’s cry for help prompts Alexandra into taking off on her own adventure, despite the fact she’s scared to death of life outside her apartment building.
At the Los Angeles press junket for Fox Walden’s Nim’s Island, Foster revealed she’s been looking to do a comedy for a long, long time. “Maverick was such a great experience. I really, really enjoyed it. Lightness is a part of your life too. You're not all just darkness. There's lightness, too. But then I couldn't find anything that was good enough. I read this script and kept banging down doors and lobbying for it. And definitely the first studio they were at, they had a different arrangement with the studio at that time and they were not keen on me at all, understandably. They know me for my dark dramas,” explained Foster.
Foster, who really went for it and gave into the physical comedy aspects of the film, admitted some scenes in Nim’s Island did make her feel a little silly. But according to the Academy Award-winner, silly is good. “You're looking for that. What's interesting to me in this movie is that I find myself talking about things like fear and this sort of solitary world that she's created - finding a hero in yourself - those are all themes that I've played in dramas many, many times – very dark dramas. Here I am doing a comedy about them, which is kind of like making fun of your most precious thing. You're making fun of the parts of yourself that are the little fragile parts of you. You have to have an ability in order to be a comedy actor.”
Surprisingly, for Foster the process of taking on an emotional scene in The Brave One or Flightplan versus doing much more light-hearted fare in Nim’s Island didn’t really differ. “It really is the same process because you have to play the same things. You're just playing them in a way here where you bring people with you or in a way that you allow people to laugh at you, but you're still playing the drama. You still have to play the drama. The experience of making a drama and making a comedy are different. It's a lighter set when you're making a comedy.”
That said, Foster’s dramatic roles have never called for her to be kissed by a real sea lion (or even a fake one). And Foster had nothing but praise for the fish-loving animal stars. “They were amazing. The sea lions are the best actors in the movie and they're just amazing. They did everything that they were supposed to do. It was just incredible. I mean, not only will he kiss me on the lips, but he'll hold the kiss until somebody says, ‘Okay.’ Then he can turn three quarters like this and then three quarters this way. They can get him to do all this stuff on the ground and on the tables. It's just amazing what these animals can do.”
And having been a child star herself, it’s easy for Foster to relate to what her two-legged Nim’s Island co-star, Abigail Breslin, is going through at this point in her career. Foster believes Breslin’s handling things well and has a lot of support from her family, which is extremely important in order to survive Hollywood. “She's very well adjusted and she likes to just get on with it and likes to just do her job and not dwell on the acting stuff,” said Foster. “She has something that I don't have, or that I didn't have as a young person, which is she has this kind of very strong access to her emotions. That's so easy for her, and she's really just born to be an actress. I really didn't have that at her age and so it's fun for me to see that, to look at a kid and go, 'Wow, that kid is born to be an actor.'”
W.C. Fields warned actors should never work with kids or animals, but Foster’s perfectly fine working with both. “I love working with them. I've made a lot of movies with children and animals, and I love working with them even more. I think it's because it's just a simpler process. They don't want to throw the spaghetti again, they're just not going to throw the spaghetti. There's no bribery or no guilt tripping that's ever going to make them throw the spaghetti again. Once they've decided it, it's just not going to happen. There's a nice simplicity to that,” offered Foster.
Foster’s ready for another comedy, if the right opportunity presents itself. The script has to move her and it has to tell a good story. Nim’s Island pulled her in because of the central characters, and Foster believes there’s a good lesson for young people in the film. “…With a film like this you see that you don't need videogame characters and laser tag in order for it to be interesting. But I think it's also a message of self-reliance and of making decisions that are strong decisions because they're what you know is right, and believing in yourself. Self-reliance for young girls - it was a big issue for me. I don't know, maybe those days are over, but it was a big issue for me even though I was born in the '60's. I still had the influence of my mom's generation that just did not believe they could take care of themselves. They thought that someone had to take care of them, and they were always looking for someone to take care of them because they were not told about taking care of themselves.”
