\u201cIt\u2019s a very good word\u2026 preposterous,\u201d Foster drawls. \u201cYou’re a full grown adult wearing other people’s clothes saying other words that you wouldn’t necessarily say in scenarios you wouldn’t believe. As a career choice, that could be considered preposterous. I have no problem laughing at that.\u201d <\/p>\n
He smiles. Then gets serious. \u201cIt’s also as ancient a profession as there is in any community \u2013 a storyteller. Be it here, or in a dark cave with a flickering fire against a wall painting. It’s ancient.\u201d For journalists, he says, \u201cthere\u2019s a draw to either leading on, \u2018That person just wants the money and the fame\u2019, or \u2018That person\u2019s out of their mind, and what they\u2019re doing is preposterous.\u2019 And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really so binary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foster, 45, sits across from me in a cushty London hotel room, having flown in for the festival premiere of his new film, Christy. Today, the burning intensity that he so often brings to the screen has been swapped out for an eco-friendly LED. He is amiable and sincere, and there is a calm, slow roughness to his voice, like a wheelbarrow over wet gravel.<\/p>\n
Christy tells the story of Christy Salters, the women\u2019s boxing champion who nearly lost her life at the hands of Jim Martin, her abusive husband-manager. Euphoria\u2019s Sydney Sweeney is the eponymous fighter, while Foster plays Jim \u2013 paunchy, balding, and uncharismatic. We watch Christy\u2019s scrappy rise to the apex of women\u2019s boxing, all the while living as a closeted lesbian in a toxic, controlling marriage that culminates in a murder attempt.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI275527936.jpeg\")
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A harrowing union: Ben Foster and Sydney Sweeney in ‘Christy’ (Black Bear Pictures)<\/p>\n
But the abuse she was subjected to wasn\u2019t all physical. \u201cCoercive control was a term I was not familiar with,\u201d says Foster. \u201cIt\u2019s not illegal in the States as it is in the UK. So I studied it, and talked to some people who were friends with Christy at the time. Anybody who\u2019s exerting that kind of control \u2013 there\u2019s not a manual for it. But it is systematic, and it seems to come intuitively to people.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past, Foster has revelled in playing villains \u2013 a violent outlaw in 2007\u2019s 3:10 to Yuma; a malicious NBA executive feuding with Adam Sandler in Hustle (2020); a slave hunter on the pursuit of Will Smith in 2022\u2019s Emancipation. But Christy features one of his most disconcerting turns \u2013 a performance of evil at its most banal and unshowy. <\/p>\n
It must be hard to locate the humanity in a character like that, I suggest. \u201cThere’s no getting around what he ultimately did to her,\u201d says Foster. \u201cBut as a storyteller, you’re not playing the whole story in every scene. Anybody who\u2019s trying to steer their [partner\u2019s] sexuality, their finances, their privacy, has to be coming from a place of profound insecurity in his own right. To me, it felt important to at least understand for myself that it came from a place of tremendous fragility.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Formidable:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI275527942.jpeg\")
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Formidable: Ben Foster and Sydney Sweeney in ‘Christy’ (Black Bear Pictures)<\/p>\n
He is full of praise for his co-star, who also produced the movie. \u201cSydney is her own force,\u201d he says, fondly. \u201cShe came in extremely prepared, knew the crew\u2019s names, was always ready to work. I\u2019d be knackered at the end of the day, and she\u2019d go train for another three hours to fight the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, the 28-year-old actor has become a fixture of newspaper headlines, the fulcrum of a neverending cycle of discourse \u2013 about her body; her acting; her politics; her advertisement for denim jeans that may or may not have contained a white supremacist dogwhistle. Sweeney, says Foster, \u201cis in a zeitgeist worldview that is\u2026 unique. And I think she\u2019s handling it incredibly well. She\u2019s a powerhouse.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u201cI’m not on any social media at all,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnd have never been. I think [my representatives] know me better than to push me into that. But she plays in that field. It\u2019s so important to this generation, to the future. I find her incredibly impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christy Martin \u2013 the real Christy Martin \u2013 broke all kinds of boundaries in the sport, with her identity, and survived the impossible<\/p>\n
Ben Foster<\/p>\n
Christy might be a particularly grim character, but Foster seems to have a penchant for heavy material \u2013 his finest role may well be in the wrenching 2018 drama Leave No Trace, playing a single father and war veteran struggling with PTSD. Things weren\u2019t always so downbeat: born in Boston to countercultural Jewish parents, Foster got his start on the Disney Channel, starring for two years as the lead of the tween series Flash Forward. He had a lead role opposite Kirsten Dunst in the superlative teen romcom Get Over It (2001), appeared twice in Freaks and Geeks \u2013 the Judd Apatow-created high school series that germinated a handful of future A-listers \u2013 and had a memorable recurring role on HBO\u2019s funereal TV classic Six Feet Under, from 2003 to 2005. <\/p>\n
Six Feet Under would end up being Foster\u2019s last steady television role. \u201cI\u2019m not against TV,\u201d he insists. \u201cWhen I was coming up, there was a very big distinction between film and television. Other people thrive in the hope of having something more consistent. I become very obsessive on a subject and want to go as far as I can \u2013 and then take a beat and look for another job.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Emancipation_Photo_07.jpeg\")
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Ben Foster in ‘Emancipation’ (Apple TV+)<\/p>\n
Foster has also, by and large, steered clear of the world of blockbusters \u2013 despite a brief sojourn into superheroism with X-Men: The Last Stand. He played the mutant Angel in the film, which was critically panned and reportedly beset with behind-the-scenes conflicts. \u201cI don\u2019t really have much of a relationship with [that film] right now,\u201d says Foster. <\/p>\n
He does, however, recall a stunt sequence involving a steep fall from a tall building. \u201cI am not a huge fan of heights,\u201d he explains, \u201cand doing a 180-foot drop in Vancouver, without a shirt, with just a wire on my back, scared me to death. But I was grateful to do that stunt.\u201d Despite the panning, the third X-Men film does have its advocates. \u201cI think the film means something to different people,\u201d Foster says. \u201cWhen people come up to me and talk about it, it seems to carry a meaning for them. Usually it\u2019s a good meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christy, too, is sure to carry a good meaning for some people: though the film has underperformed at the US box office, it\u2019s a moving, well-made biopic with strong performances, telling a story that deserves to be told. \u201cChristy Martin \u2013 the real Christy Martin \u2013 broke all kinds of boundaries in the sport, with her identity, and survived the impossible,\u201d says Foster, earnestly. \u201cUltimately I find it a very inspiring story. So it\u2019s nice to be talking about it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
He leans back. \u201cAnd it\u2019s really nice not waking up and going to work considering Jim every day. I\u2019ve shook him.\u201d As best as I can tell, he really has.<\/p>\n
\u2018Christy\u2019 is released in cinemas from 28 Nov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-284238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}