'My role was making movies that mattered,' says Jodie Foster, as 'Taxi Driver' turns 50

""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'.""

""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.""

""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.""

Jodie Foster began performing at age three, first appearing in commercials before moving into television and film. She retains scars from a lion mauling at age nine but remained unafraid after a trainer intervened. Early work built emotional control and resilience that later informed her performances, though such survival skills can hinder personal growth when no longer needed. At age twelve she starred opposite Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver, a controversial portrayal of a teenage sex worker that led to her first Academy Award nomination. She speaks French in the new film Vie Privee, portraying an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris.

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