Jodie Foster Seeking Roles That Require Her to Do “Anything Hard”

Jodie Foster revealed the qualities she’s looking for in an acting role now that she’s aspiring to devote “90 percent” of her time to directing on Conan on Thursday night.

During her appearance on the TBS show, host Conan O’Brien asked the Contact actress about her helming work. “I made a decision. I used to act 90 percent of the time and direct 10 percent of the time.” Now, she said, she wants to do the opposite. 

When O’Brien asked Foster to tell Hollywood producers what roles might persuade her to return to working in front of the camera, she said, “I want to enjoy myself. I’ve never had to learn how to do anything hard. I’d like to learn how to be a javelin thrower, or play violin or speak Italian. I’d like to be good at something, I’m not really good at anything.”

O’Brien then took the opportunity to joke, “That’s a crazy statement coming from Jodie Foster.” He added, “You’re going to get all these roles for being an eye surgeon and you’re going to disappear for two years and come back an eye surgeon.”

“I’d just like to be an expert at something that’s useful, then I’d like to stop doing it and never do it again,” she responded.

Foster recently directed the “Arkangel” episode of Black Mirror and the 2016 George-Clooney starring film Money Monster.

In a recent interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Foster called acting “the greatest film school ever” for an aspiring director. Actors, she said, know the ins and outs of each department and the lingo on set. “You get to be inside a scene and understand why a scene works or why it doesn’t,” she said.

She added that she didn’t get to do as much acting in her 20s and 30s as she would have liked to because directing jobs were less predictable than acting jobs, which she often booked six months in advance of shooting, to schedule.

Foster appeared on the show while promoting her film Hotel Artemis, in which she plays a nurse at and proprietor of a secret L.A. hospital for criminals.

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