Jodie Foster Admits She ‘Never Would Have Chosen’ to Be An Actor: ‘A Cruel Job That Was Chosen For Me’

Jodie Foster has opened up about her thoughts on acting, admitting that it’s a job she ‘never would have chosen’ for herself.

She’s been acting all her life

Jodie Foster, 63, is a well-known esteemed actor with not one, but two Oscars for Best Actress for her performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs.

She’s actually been in the industry almost her entire life.

Foster started at the age of 3

The actress started appearing in commercials from the age of 3, and her first credited TV appearance was in a Mayberry R.F.D. episode back in 1968 when she was only 5 years old.

Her first appearance in a feature film was at the age of 6, and she was in the 1973 adaptation of Tom Sawyer at 10.

But she never would have chosen this

Despite her esteemed career, Foster confessed at the Marrakech Film Festival on November 30 that, if it were up to her, she wouldn’t have picked acting as a career.

According to Variety, she said, “I would never have chosen to be an actor, I don’t have the personality of an actor. I’m not somebody that wants to dance on a table and, you know, sing songs for people.”

Foster branded it a ‘cruel job’

“It’s actually just a cruel job that was chosen for me as a young person that I don’t remember starting,” Foster continued.

“So right there, it makes my work a little bit different because I am not interested in acting just for the sake of acting.”

She only did it to ‘survive’

“If I was on a desert island, I think probably the last thing I would ever do is act. So I was just trying to survive,” Foster said.

She went on to say that her own experience causes her to be concerned for ‘the young child actors of this era’, so she sometimes reaches out to them.

Foster worries about young actors

The actress explained, “I feel like: ‘Wait, where are their parents? And why is nobody telling them that they should stop doing so many movies or maybe not be so drunk on the red carpet?’”

“I want to take care of them because I know how dangerous it is.”

She feels acting ‘robs’ people of their lives

“I don’t know why anyone would want to be an actor now, if they knew that in order to be excellent they would have to contend with being robbed of their life in a way,” Foster admitted.

“I don’t know how you make sense of that except to have what my mom helped me do, which is to have this very firm delineation between your private life and your public life.”