Jodie Foster has spoken out about parents who encourage their children to act, saying she \u201cknow[s] how dangerous it is\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Marrakesh film festival, Foster said that she \u201cwould never have chosen to be an actor, I don\u2019t have the personality of an actor. I\u2019m not somebody that wants to dance on a table and, you know, sing songs for people.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIt\u2019s actually just a cruel job that was chosen for me as a young person that I don\u2019t remember starting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foster\u2019s first booking was at age three, on a commercial for the sunscreen lotion Coppertone<\/a>. She had not intended to appear but accompanied her elder brother to the audition and charmed the casting agents.<\/p>\n More adverts followed, before she began sitcom work in 1968 and made her first film at age six. Her childhood was filled with appearances on TV shows and in movies such as Tom Sawyer (1973). Three years later, at age 12, she was cast as a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese\u2019s Taxi Driver.<\/p>\n Jodie Foster in the 1973 film Tom Sawyer. Foster said that her experiences at the time have meant she now finds herself \u201creaching out to the young child actors of this era. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n She also professed bafflement as to why people would today be drawn to the profession at all. \u201cI don\u2019t 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. I don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n