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Jodie Foster Plays a Visit to Nim's Island
By Fred Topel | Image property of Fox Walden
Jodie Foster has played all sorts of drama and proven that she can deliver the goods. The only thing left for her to conquer was comedy. Nim's Island allows her to do that, playing a neurotic author on her first venture out of the house in years, to of all places a tropical island to rescue one of her young readers. The film involved pratfalls like falling off a treadmill.
Jodie Foster on Nim's Island
"That was a double, that one with the Treadmill," admitted Foster. "I'm trying to think of where the other double is. I don't know about the other one. The rowboat is me. All the rowboat is me, coming down in the rowboat and all of that. It was a pretty tame shoot. It wasn't so bad. It was just freezing, really cold, but that's about it. "
They say dying is easy, comedy is hard, but action can be pretty tough too. "I think the biggest challenge for all of us, Gerry [Butler] and myself and Abigail too, for all of us, was the stuff that we did in the tank. It was three in the morning, nighttime and it was the Australian winter. It was cold and there was a lot of underwater stuff. A lot of days with underwater stuff. I'm pretty good in the water. I have pretty good breath and I dive and all of that, but it's cold. In the rowboat and all of that, with those big huge waves hitting you in the face and all of that stuff it was a challenge. It was also really fun because by the end of the day you really felt like you did something."
Foster was ready for adventure. She prepares as such for all her roles, but in this case it directly applied. "Before I start a movie usually I do some bourgeois thing like I go on a big hike, but an all day hike and it's not like there aren't cars somewhere or that I don't have a cell phone, but it just gives me this feeling that I did something big and that I accomplished something big. I try to do that before every film. I try to accomplish one big thing. We were in Iceland before this, my family, and so we did a whole glacier thing. We were on a glacier. So it's just the sense of accomplishment in something and for kids that just translates into confidence."
Nim's Island
Pratfalling and mugging are not usually in Foster's wheelhouse for drama, so Nim's Island is a different look at the Oscar-winning actress. It also gave Foster her first inter-species love scene, getting kissed by a seal.
"That was a real seal. Oh, yeah. The only fake seals, and I'm not sure that we even used a fake seal, I think we might've had to CGI the real seal on the beach. The seal could not physically go on the beach because the real seal would leave and they didn't want, Sea World didn't want to lose their million seals, or Sea Lions. They were amazing. The Sea Lions are the best actors in the movie and they're just amazing. They did everything that they were supposed to do. It was just incredible. I mean, not only will he kiss me on the lips, but he'll hold the kiss until somebody says okay. Then he can turn three quarters like this and then three quarters this way. They can get him to do all this stuff on the ground and on the tables. It's just amazing what these animals can do."
The age old Hollywood adage against working with children and animals does not hold any weight with Foster. "I love working with them. I've made a lot of movies with children and animals and I love working with them even more. I think it's because it's just a simpler process. They don't want to throw the spaghetti again. They're just not going to throw the spaghetti. There's no bribery or no guilt tripping that's ever going to make them throw the spaghetti again. Once they've decided it, it's just not going to happen. There's a nice simplicity to that."
Nim's Island opens to theaters on April 4th.
For the trailer, poster and more movie info, go to the Nim's Island Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Fox Walden
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