Lifestyle
‘My role was making movies that mattered,’ says Jodie Foster, as ‘Taxi Driver’ turns 50
Jodie Foster, shown here in 2025, plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris in Vie Privée (A Private Life).
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
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Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Jodie Foster has been acting since she was 3, starting out in commercials, then appearing in TV shows and films. She still has scars from the time a lion mauled her on the set of a Disney film when she was 9.
“He picked me up by the hip and shook me,” she says. “I had no idea what was happening. … I remember thinking, ‘Oh this must be an earthquake.’”
Luckily, the lion responded promptly when a trainer said, “Drop it.” It was a scary moment, Foster says, but “the good news is I’m fine … and I’m not afraid of lions.”
“I think there’s a part of me that has been made resilient by what I’ve done for a living and has been able to control my emotions in order to do that in a role,” she says. “When you’re older, those survival skills get in the way, and you have to learn how to ditch them [when] they’re not serving you anymore.”
In 1976, at age 12, Foster starred opposite Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver. Foster’s portrayal of a teenage sex worker in the film sparked controversy because of her age, but also led to her first Academy Award nomination. She remains grateful for the experience on the film, which turns 50 this year.
“What luck to have been part of that, our golden age of cinema in the ’70s, some of the greatest movies that America ever made, the greatest filmmakers, auteur films,” she says. “I couldn’t be happier that [my mom] chose these roles for me.”
In the new film Vie Privée (A Private Life), she plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris. With the exception of a few lines, she speaks French throughout the film.
Interview highlights
On learning to speak French as a child
My mom, when I was about 9 years old, she had never traveled anywhere in her life and right before then, she took a trip to France and fell in love with it and said, “OK, you’re going to learn French. You are going to go to an immersion school, and someday maybe you’ll be a French actor.” And so they dropped me in where [there] was a school, Le Lycée Francais de Los Angeles, that does everything in French, so it was science and math and history, everything in French. And I cried for about six months and then I spoke fluently and got over it.
On being the family breadwinner at a young age
My mom was very aware that that was unusual, and that would put pressure on me. So she kind of sold it differently. She would say, “Well, you do one job, but then your sister does another job. And we all participate, we’re all doing a job, and this is all part of the family.” And I think that was her way of … making my brothers and sisters not feel like somehow they were beholden to me or to my brother who also was an actor. And not having pressure on me, but also helping her ego a bit, because I think that was hard for her to feel that she was being taken care of by a child. …
There’s two things that can happen as a child actor: One is you develop resilience, and you come up with a plan and a way to survive intact, and there are real advantages to that in life. And I really feel grateful for the advantages that that’s given me, the benefits that that has given me. Or the other is you totally fall apart and you can’t take it.
On her early immersion into art and film
My mom saw that I was interested in art and cinema and took me to every foreign film she could find, mostly because she wanted me to hear other languages. But we went to very dark, interesting German films that lasted eight hours long. And we saw all the French New Wave movies, and we had long conversations about movies and what they meant. I think that she respected me.
I did have a skill that was beyond my years and I had a strong sense of self … [and the] ability to understand emotions and character that was beyond my years. [Acting] gave me an outlet that I would not have had if I’d gone on a path to be what I was meant to be, which is really just to be an intellectual. … It was a sink or swim. I had to develop an emotional side. I had to cut off my brain sometimes to play characters in order to be good, and I wanted to be good. If I was gonna do something, I wanted it to be excellent. So in order to do that, I had to learn emotions and I had to learn, not only how to access them, but also how to control them so that I could give them intention.
Jodie Foster attends the Cannes Film Festival in 1976 to promote Taxi Driver.
Raph Gatti/AFP for Getty Images
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On sexual abuse in Hollywood
I’ve really had to examine that, like, how did I get saved? There were microaggressions, of course. Anybody who’s in the workplace has had misogynist microaggressions. That’s just a part of being a woman, right? But what kept me from having those bad experiences, those terrible experiences? And what I came to believe … is that I had a certain amount of power by the time I was, like, 12. So by the time I had my first Oscar nomination, I was part of a different category of people that had power and I was too dangerous to touch. I could’ve ruined people’s careers or I could’ve called “Uncle,” so I wasn’t on the block.
It also might be just my personality, that I am a head-first person and I approach the world in a head-first way. … It’s very difficult to emotionally manipulate me because I don’t operate with my emotions on the surface. Predators use whatever they can in order to manipulate and get people to do what they want them to do. And that’s much easier when the person is younger, when the person is weaker, when a person has no power. That’s precisely what predatory behavior is about: using power in order to diminish people, in order to dominate them.
On her decision to safeguard her personal life
I did not want to participate in celebrity culture. I wanted to make movies that I loved. I wanted to give everything of myself on-screen, and I wanted to survive intact by having a life and not handing that life over to the media and to people that wished me ill. …
What’s important to consider is that I grew up in a different time, where people couldn’t be who they were and we didn’t have the kinds of freedoms that we have now. And I look at my sons’ generation, and bless them, that they have a kind of justice that we just didn’t [have] access to. And I did the best I could and I had a big plan in mind of making films that could make people better. And that’s all I wanted to do was make movies. I didn’t want to be a public figure or a pioneer or any of those things. And I benefited from all of the pioneers that came before me that did that hard work of having tomatoes thrown at them and being unsafe. And they did that work and I have thanked them. I thank them.
We don’t all have to have the same role. And I think my role was making movies that mattered and creating female characters that were human characters and creating a huge body of work and then being able to look back at the pattern of that body of work and go like, “Oh wow, Jodie played a doctor. She played a mother. She played as a scientist. She played an astronaut. She killed all the bad guys. She did all of those things — and had a lesbian wife and had two kids and was a complete person that had a whole other life.” And I think that will be valuable someday down the line, that I was able to keep my life intact and leave a legacy. There’s lots of ways of being valuable.
Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
Jewelry Among the Exhibits at a Daniel Brush Retrospective
Nearly four years after his death, a retrospective of the multidisciplinary work by the self-taught American artist Daniel Brush — encompassing sculpture, paintings and jewelry in materials as diverse as steel, Bakelite and gold — is scheduled to open June 8 at the Paris location of L’Ecole, School of Jewelry Arts.
“Daniel Brush: The Art of Line and Light” will be the fifth time that L’Ecole has exhibited the artist’s work. But its president, Lise Macdonald, said she believed Mr. Brush’s legacy warranted repeated consideration: “He is a very niche artist, but he is excellent — really one of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st century.”
The diversity of his creations has been part of his appeal, she said. “We don’t really consider him as purely a jeweler but more a protean artist where jewelry was part of his approach.”
L’Ecole Paris, which operates in an 18th-century mansion in the Ninth Arrondissement and is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels, has prepared programming to complement the show, from conversations with experts on Mr. Brush’s work (to be held on site and streamed online) to jewelry-making workshops for children. Details of the free exhibition and the events are on the school’s website; the show is scheduled to end Oct. 4.
The exhibition is to include more than 75 pieces, which span much of Mr. Brush’s five-decade career. They have been selected by Olivia Brush, his wife and collaborator, and by Vivienne Becker, a jewelry historian and author who said she first met the couple more than 30 years ago. Some exhibits, they said, have never been seen by the public before.
Ms. Becker, who wrote the 2019 monograph “Daniel Brush: Jewels Sculpture,” said the artist had possessed vast knowledge of the history of jewelry and shared her belief that jewels “answer a very important, very basic human impulse to adorn — that it’s essential to customs, beliefs, and ceremonies around the world.” She also has written a book documenting the L’Ecole exhibition — and with the same title — that examines the artist’s preoccupation with the themes of light and line.
“He loved the idea of making a real, intransigent, opaque metal into something that was almost translucent, or transparent,” said Ms. Becker, citing as an example a trio of bangles made in 2009 to 2010 that are called the “Rings of Infinity.” The lines that he engraved on the aluminum pieces functioned, she explained, to “elevate the jewel from a trinket to a great, great work of art.”
A series of engraved steel panels titled “Thinking About Monet” used the interplay of line and light to achieve a different effect, she said. Mr. Brush made individual strokes in tight formation on the panels, producing gently rippling surfaces whose color changes with shifting light conditions.
The effect “is really hard to understand. I couldn’t,” Ms. Becker said. “So many people ask, ‘Are they tinted? Are they colored?’ It’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the breaking of the light.”
Though Mr. Brush was a widely acknowledged master of skills such as granulation, the application of tiny gold balls to a metal surface, both Ms. Brush and Ms. Becker said the exhibition’s goal was not to highlight his virtuosity — nor, Ms. Becker said, was that ever a concern of Mr. Brush’s. “He didn’t want to talk about the technique at all,” she said. “Technique has to just be a means to an end. He just wanted people to be amazed, to have a sense of wonder again.”
The works selected for the L’Ecole exhibition reflect his range, which veered from diamond-set Bakelite brooches inspired by animal crackers to a steel and gold orb meant to be an object of contemplation. “He didn’t want to have boundaries,” Ms. Brush said. “He wanted to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.”
The couple met as students at what is now called Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and her 1967 wedding ring was the first jewel that Mr. Brush made.
All of Mr. Brush’s works were one-of-a-kind creations, completed from start to finish by him in the New York City loft that served as a workshop as well as a family home. Photographs of the space, which contained a library with titles on the eclectic subjects that preoccupied him — Chinese history, Byzantine art, Impressionist painting — and the antique machinery that inspired him and that he used to make his tools, are featured in the exhibition and reproduced in Ms. Becker’s book.
Ms. Brush is a fiber artist in her own right, but Mr. Brush also frequently credited her as an equal participant on pieces bearing his name. “I did not physically make the work,” she explained, “but the work would not have evolved or happened the way it did if it were not for the way we lived our lives,” she said.
Lifestyle
Thanks to ‘Mormon Wives,’ Dirty Soda Is a National Obsession
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Lifestyle
Chaos Gardening: A Laid-Back Way to Garden
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
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