Jodie Foster: After a half-century, it’s still her time

Jodie Foster was talking about life’s phases, about sometimes stepping back.
The important thing, she said, is “being able to recognize that it’s not my time. It’s someone else’s.”
That’s a fine concept for many 61-year-old actors. But right now actually IS her time. She’s just received an Academy Award nomination (for “Nyad,” shown here), while she’s starring in an acclaimed cable series (“True Detective,” 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO and then on Max).
All of this arrives 32 and 35 years after she won best-actress Oscars for “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Accused.” This nomination is for best-supporting actress … just like the oe she got (for “Taxi Driver”), 47 years ago.
As Foster started a press session for “True Detective,” someone helpfully noted that this is her first regular TV-series role since 1975. “ ’75 was a long time ago,” she agreed.
It was part of a fast start. Foster learned to read at 3 and did her first commercials at 5. The next year, she began a long string of situation comedies, starring in one (as a tiny con artist in “Paper Moon”) and guesting others Then “Taxi Driver” propelled her into the Scorsese-De Niro world of serious movies. She’s made many (“Panic Room,” “Flightplan,” “Contact,” etc.), directed some, stayed busy.
So it might be intimidating for other directors to try to hire her. “You were terrifying,” Issa Lopez, the “True Detective” writer-director, told her at the press session.
The “True Detective” anthology has been around since 2012, drawing waves of praise. “It was the beginning of my addiction to streaming,” Foster said. “It was something I just binge-watched.”
But this is only its fourth edition. Lopez – who had done most of her previous work in her native Mexico – envisioned an Arctic murder, probed by two female detectives, one of them older, troubled and flawed.
When she offered the role, Lopez said, Foster wanted more troubles and more flaws. “I said, ‘So you want her to be an (bleep). And she said, ‘Yeah.’”
That shows here range. In “Nyad” (now on Netflix), Foster plays a real-life person who seems notably short of flaws. She nurtures a friend (Diana Nyad), who obsessed on swimming from Cuba to Florida in her 60s.
Nyad is played by Annette Bening, 65, as an unmovable force – intense, impassioned unbending. Foster plays the opposite, putting her own life on hold to help a friend. Both drew Oscar nominations. This is still their time.