LOS ANGELES — It was supposed to be a day of fun at an amusement park with her young son, Charlie. But when the toddler slipped out of her grasp and disappeared for a few moments into a crowd of strangers, Jodie Foster's world came to a crashing halt.
"I could see him through this sea of people — turning around in circles, crying and yelling, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,' but I couldn't get to him because there were all these people in front of me," Foster remembers. "It was a terrible, heart-pounding feeling of anxiety."
In that scary instance, Foster became much like her lioness character, Kyle Pratt, in the new thriller "Flightplan," which opened Friday. A recent widow whose young daughter goes missing on a trans-Atlantic flight bound for New York, Kyle is a woman "who doesn't care about anyone else and will take anyone else down who's in her path," Foster says.
Has Foster's character lost her marbles? Therein lies the mystery.
The role was originally written for a man, but when producer Brian Grazer decided to cast a woman, he knew "there was really only one woman who had the humanity, and at the same time could turn around and kick a guy's (butt)." Adds "Flightplan" director Robert Schwentke: "Jodie would do anything for her children. I think that's why she was able to tap into this at such a primal level."
It is no coincidence that two of Foster's most recent films, "Flightplan" and "Panic Room," deal with a mother protecting a child.
"I have a fear that I can't keep them safe; a feeling that the world is cruel and I can't keep them from that," the 42-year-old mother says of her own instincts. "That's part of the reason why I was drawn to the film."
"She has a protective eye," says Grazer, a friend of Foster's for 18 years. "She's experienced a lot in her life and that intense protection is always in full operation."
After the morning rush of getting her children off to school, Foster arrives a few minutes late and without makeup to breakfast one recent morning at the Century Plaza Hotel's Breeze restaurant.
Charlie, now 7, and Kit, almost 4, started their day with raisin muffins, milk and Lucky Charms. The dog (Lucy), mouse (Lily) and nameless fish also had to be fed.
"Then there's teeth brushing, face washing, sunblock, vitamins and Kit needs his (asthma) inhaler," says the harried mom. Foster employs a nanny, and her siblings and mother live nearby to lend helping hands. She continues to dodge any and all questions about her sons' paternity or whether or not she is in a relationship. "Oh, I never talk about that," is all she'll say.
Because Kit was refusing to eat breakfast and dress himself, he wasn't allowed to watch his favorite cartoon, the Disney Channel's "Kim Possible." And Foster wasn't happy about that, since she too is a big Kim fan. "I love the whole spy/cheerleader thing," she says.
Many of Foster's most memorable characters — Sarah Tobias ("The Accused"), Clarice Starling ("Silence of the Lambs"), Dede Tate ("Little Man Tate"), Ellie Arroway ("Contact") and Meg Altman ("Panic Room") — could also be described as part spy/part cheerleader, with each taking matters into her own hands when facing injustice or personal threat.
The actress, who remains very selective about the roles she takes, seems attracted to the type. But if there is any question about the risk of typecasting, the industry might be partly to blame.
"We know Jodie Foster is a smart woman," says Entertainment Tonight film historian Leonard Maltin. "But it's always tough for women to find leading roles in commercial Hollywood movies. She looks for the best material she can find, and if it happens that it's thrillers, then it's thrillers. What ultimately matters is that she's always good. Movie audiences not only like her but respect her."
Maltin has seen "Flightplan" and says, "She does the same reliable job you'd expect her to do. . . . She has a track record that is long and solid enough that it can withstand the usual ups and downs of a starring career."
Unlike her "Flightplan" character, Foster has never questioned her sanity, though she admits to a dark period when she was "19 or 20" and living alone in New York City. This was the year after John Hinckley, a man obsessed with Foster and her 1976 assassination-themed film, "Taxi Driver," nearly killed President Ronald Reagan. Though she does relate the incident to her feelings at the time, Foster says she felt lonely and "was doing stupid, crazy things."
Now in a healthier place, the 1985 magna cum laude Yale graduate takes spinning classes at her gym to keep in shape for her often physical roles. "I really like physical movies," she says. "I would love a movie where I had to learn how to do something that I could never imagine myself doing. Something that requires a real physical transformation where you learn the character through her body. Whether it's playing the flute or running a marathon."
Now that her kids are a bit older, she's heading back to work in a big way. She just finished Spike Lee's spring 2006 bank-robbery film, "Inside Man," co-starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen, and produced by Grazer. Next up, she plans to direct and co-star with Robert De Niro in "Sugarland," about Jamaican cane laborers in Florida. She'll play a civil rights attorney; he'll play a plantation owner. Her long-in-the-works film "Flora Plum," in which Claire Danes was to have played the object of a circus sideshow freak's obsession, and Meryl Streep a poodle trainer, is now on hold, though she hopes to eventually revive the project.
Foster also hopes to brush off her long-dormant comedic abilities, but says she is rarely offered intelligent comedies. Instead, she incorporates humor into her own life.
Inspired by the jokes Mel Gibson pulled on the set of "Maverick," Foster bought Lily at a local pet store and stuffed the mouse in a box of licorice to surprise director Schwentke. Not only did the joke bomb (Schwentke likes mice), but she ended up stuck with "another pet to love."
"I get so happy to see someone like Jodie descend into absurdity and be human," says her "Flightplan" co-star Peter Sarsgaard, who plays a U.S. air marshal.
When Foster brought her sons to the "Flightplan" plane set at the old Warner Hollywood lot in late 2004, Schwentke let the boys call the shots. "I had the kids say 'action' and 'cut' a couple times" to surprise Foster, says Schwentke.
Foster's kids also got to play with first-time actress Marlene Lawston, 7, who plays Foster's daughter, Julia. "If we did a hard scene that was uncomfortable, she'd say, 'Good job,' " Lawston said at the film's premiere party Monday night.
A former child actor who began working at age 3, Foster made a pledge early in her adult career to protect her young co-stars. "I want to make sure all the mean things that happened to me don't happen to them." Among some of her less pleasant on-set memories: "Getting yelled at by some actor, who was bombed, who forgot his lines and would take it out on the kids."
Her life as a child actor, she says, was nothing like the glammed-up Lindsay Lohans of today. Though she did record a French pop album at age 15, the tomboy wasn't encouraged to grow up fast and sex it up for the cameras (with the exception of "Taxi Driver," in which she played a child prostitute). "There were always the cute modelina types, and there were always the real actors," she says. "Always was, always will be. In the old days, a young actor was given time. Today, they're headlining a movie, and they've only made two movies."
A Foster admirer, Lohan says, "She's an incredible woman — just how long she's been in this business. She actually made the transition from younger actress to adult actor."
Foster hasn't seen Lohan's 2003 remake of her original 1976 "Freaky Friday" and "can't remember" whether or not she was offered the mother role in the updated version that eventually went to Jamie Lee Curtis. But, she asks, "Who could be better than Jamie Lee Curtis?"
Foster recently started showing her sons some of her early work as a child actress, when she appeared in such TV shows as "Gunsmoke" and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father."
The one downside of reviewing her old projects: seeing herself age on film. "It's funny, the same way it was hard to see myself go through adolescence. You look at yourself between 40 and 44, or between 35 and 40, and it's a big difference."
"I'd lie if I didn't every once in a while say, 'Oh, my (gosh), look at that! My skin! And when did I get those lids?' But that's what you are — your face and your gestures. That's what I bring to the table.