Jodie Foster returns to family comedy
Jenny Peters

LOS ANGELES — As renowned actress Jodie Foster walked the red carpet at Sunday’s afternoon premiere of her new family adventure comedy “Nim’s Island,” she marked more than 40 years in the entertainment business. The 45-year-old two-time Oscar winner began her career doing commercials at age two, with countless televisions shows and films to follow. Foster has certainly starred in other comedies along the way, think “Freaky Friday” (the original) and “Maverick”, but as she tells it, getting the chance to star in “Nim’s Island” didn’t come that easily.
“I’ve been wanting to do a comedy for a long time actually,” Foster admitted at an earlier press conference in support of the film. “Lightness is a part of your life, too. You’re not all just darkness. There’s lightness too. But then I couldn’t find anything that was good enough. I read this script and kept banging down doors and lobbying for it. And, definitely, the first studio [the producers] were at, they had a different arrangement with the studio at that time and they were not keen on me at all, understandably. They know me for my dark dramas.”
Not being wanted for the “Nim’s Island” leading role actually made Foster want to play the part even more. “I think that all the movies that have really been the most satisfying to me in some way, the really big, kind of fundamental performance experiences like ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ ‘The Accused,’ were all movies that I had to lobby for. They didn’t want me for them. So I’ve learned that’s a key to something. If you want it that badly then there must be a reason why.”
“Nim’s Island” is based on the novel of the same name by Wendy Orr, who attended the premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and tells an exciting and funny adventure tale that centres on a girl and her scientist father. The pair, played by Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler, who were all smiles along with Foster at the gala premiere, live on an otherwise deserted tropical island, where the girl avidly reads the adventure novels of Alexandra Rover (Foster). When her father goes missing, the girl contacts the author, and together they set out to find him.
As Jodie Foster tells it, “Nim’s Island” is much more than just an exciting outdoor adventure tale, however, and that’s exactly why she wanted to be a part of it, to give little girls a movie that will hopefully help them to grow up to be as self-reliant and successful as Foster is herself in real life.
“With a film like this, you see that you don’t need videogame characters and laser tag in order for it to be interesting,” she explained. “And I think it’s also a message of self-reliance and of making decisions that are strong decisions because they’re what you know is right, and of believing in yourself. [And it is about] self-reliance for young girls. You’ve seen some little boys in movies do that, but I haven’t seen a lot of little girls do that”.