“I’m so happy to be in Marrakech,” she said with an ease that felt genuine, almost intimate. It was her first visit to the city, “but it certainly won’t be my last,” and the warmth of the festival mirrored the tone of her presence: gracious, reflective, and quietly formidable.
The tribute ceremony itself proved unexpectedly emotional. Watching a montage of her work, from a precocious child actor to one of the most commanding performers of her generation, Foster found herself confronting time in a way few actors ever do. “Seeing the clip reel of my work over the years was quite emotional,” she admitted. “It felt like a reminder of watching myself grow up on screen.” Not nostalgia, exactly, but continuity. A life lived, frame by frame.
That sense of evolution continues today. Among the films screened in her honor was Vie privée, Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest work and Foster’s long-awaited full French-language role. The project felt less like a departure than a quiet assertion of curiosity. “I’ve been wanting to do a full French-language role for a long time,”she said. Working in French, she explained, brought with it a rare vulnerability. “I’m always a bit more self-conscious about finding the right words. But it also allows me to tap into a part of my personality that I don’t often get to use.” Even now, Foster is still testing edges.
That instinct, to resist calcification, has been present since the beginning. At 14, fresh off Taxi Driver, she told Interview magazine, “I’m sure maybe that I have a method locked up there somewhere, but it’s an unconscious one… Why make a job out of it?” Decades later, the sentiment hasn’t entirely changed. “I’ve just always loved movies,” she said simply in Marrakech. “That’s really the secret, I’m just a big movie lover at heart.” Her ideal day, she joked, still involves “a little skiing in the morning and then spending the rest of the day watching films and eating.”
Of course, loving movies doesn’t mean being immune to doubt. Foster spoke candidly about insecurity, about the strange dissonance of publicity tours where the past is constantly resurrected. “People talk about my old work, which makes me feel like I have to go out and prove myself again,” she said. The place she feels most herself, she confessed, is not on stage or at ceremonies, but on set, working.
That long view carried her to The Accused, a role of raw, bruising power. Looking back, Foster is almost disarmingly honest about her process. “I didn’t do much mental preparation at all,” she said. “I was kind of lazy back then. I just showed up and did it.” She wasn’t entirely satisfied with her performance, but the film resonated, igniting conversations that extended far beyond cinema. Winning the Oscar changed everything. “I had thought I would just go to grad school after that,” she admitted. “I didn’t think my career would last.”
Then came The Silence of the Lambs, a performance that would redefine the psychological thriller and immortalize Clarice Starling. Working with Jonathan Demme, Foster found a collaborator who understood empathy as craft. “He had such a gift for working with marginalized characters and giving voice to the underdog,” she said. The experience was intense, “incredibly intense,” by her own account, but deeply fulfilling. Clarice wasn’t just brave; she was watchful, intelligent, quietly defiant. In retrospect, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.
Across decades, a pattern emerges: women navigating hostile systems, pushing against structures not built for them. Yet Foster insists this was not always a conscious mission. “For a long time, I just didn’t question the fact that I was surrounded by men,” she said. “It was just how things were.” Awareness came later, with age, with power, with the ability to produce and to support first-time women directors. She speaks with particular admiration of Céline Sciamma, calling Portrait of a Lady on Fire “a true female gaze.” “I hope I’ve been able to play a small part in opening doors,” she said. “There’s still a long way to go, but I’m encouraged by the progress.”
Having lived through nearly every major shift in modern filmmaking, from the auteur-driven 1970s to franchises, blockbusters, and now streaming, Foster remains both pragmatic and hopeful. “The 70s were a true golden age,” she said, “and I was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time.” Today, she sees a bifurcated industry: large-scale franchises on one end, intimate, auteur-driven work on the other, with streaming offering new possibilities for long-form storytelling. “The viewing habits may be shifting,” she reflected, “but the power of cinema to transport and connect us remains.”