Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412230114
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAL VINCENT LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
Jodie Foster, cool and ever in control, was sitting in her 52nd-floor suite at New York's Righa Royal Hotel, contemplating past and present risks. A mere 32-years-old, she has already made 31 movies and is a two-time Academy Award winner. At Yale, she graduated with honors.
Along the way, Foster has become one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, beguiling moviegoers for two decades. With Oscars for ``The Accused'' and ``The Silence of the Lambs,'' she's not oblivious to the buzz generated by her current project.
But the risk is a doozy. In ``Nell,'' opening on Christmas Day, Foster plays a backwoods North Carolina girl who has never been exposed to the modern world. Raised by a mother who has suffered repeated strokes, she speaks in gibberish, communicating largely by exaggerated gestures and dance-like movement. It is an assignment lesser actresses might avoid.
``I've lived most of my life, since 3 or so, on movie sets,'' Foster said, tucking her short-cropped blond hair behind her ear. ``In my acting roles, I like to play something entirely different from what I've lived.
`` `Nell' is an emotional film about silence. It's not a case of, `Look how flashy I am.' This is a woman who lives with her emotions on the outside. I have to leave all that intellectual stuff behind. That's a crutch I can't use here. Nell doesn't know how to build barriers yet - the barriers that we build every day with language.
``She has a language. It's just not our language.''
In one scene, set in a pool hall in a small North Carolina town, she lifts her shirt and bares her breasts. It's innocent, rather than sexual, but it will remind audiences of ``The Accused,'' in which her character was gang-raped atop a pinball machine.
``Yes, the setting is the same, but everything else is different,'' said Foster, who also produced the film. ``Nell doesn't know about being ashamed yet. The pool room is a male domain. The scene wasn't designed as a throwback to `The Accused.' It's just a coincidence.
``But when she doesn't get shamed or humiliated, the guys do. `We didn't do anything. She's just crazy,' they say. The truth is that we keep thinking of the body only in terms of sexuality. Isn't the body also what we walk with? Isn't it also what we sing with? Nell is a natural.''
The truth is Hollywood wanted nothing to do with ``Nell'' until Foster decided she wanted to star and produce. It is based on a play called ``Igioglossia,'' a surrealistic piece with three characters in a mountain cabin. ``There was nothing of the real world about it,'' Foster said. ``The play became just the basis for our script.''
Playwright Mark Handley was found living in a cabin in the northwest woods by himself - without electricity. ``He was a hippie,'' co-producer Renee Missel said. ``He'd never seen more than $10,000 at one time in his life. He was shocked when we asked him to come to Los Angeles and rewrite the play as a movie. In the city, he fell apart. He became a mad man and had to leave.''
Foster called in William Nicholson, who wrote the script for ``Shadowlands.'' But she decided she didn't want to direct herself. ``Directing would get in the way of my acting,'' she said.
Not that she hasn't been behind the camera. Her directorial debut was ``Little Man Tate,'' a small film about a brilliant little boy who was a pawn for adults. She was familiar with the subject.
``I'm attracted to stories about outsiders who have to fit in,'' Foster said. ``I guess I get fascinated by the same things, over and over, but I'd want only to direct stories about subjects I've experienced. On the other hand, I'd like to act primarily in stories that are outside my own existence. There is a big difference.''
The reins were handed over to Michael Apted, who directed Sissy Spacek to an Oscar in ``Coal Miner's Daughter.''
``Yes, I was a little worried about taking the job,'' he said. ``With the leading lady also starring and being a former director, a little trepidation was natural. But Jodie was very much the actress alone here. She lived alone during the filming, had her own house.
``She was very accessible to the crew and to all of us on the set but, when not working, she stayed to herself. I think she wanted to stay with Nell, the woman apart.''
The movie was filmed in the Smoky Mountains near tiny Robbinsville, N.C. Nell's cabin is on Fontana Lake.
``It is in Graham County, the poorest county in North Carolina,'' co-producer Missel said. ``There is nothing there, but it is beautiful. The people in the town regarded us with suspicion at first. They had heard that everyone from Hollywood did drugs and partied all the time. I told them that was a good while back. It was important that the location suggest that this was so remote that someone could have lived there and not been in civilization for 20 years.''
In order to find Nell, Foster went into isolation for a month. She read about Appalachia. She recorded the speech of stroke victims. She took dance classes. Finally, she phoned director Apted and told him, bluntly, ``I'm coming over and show you how I'm going to do Nell.''
``I don't get lost in a character,'' Foster said. ``All that study came to nothing. It turned out to be useless, although I did learn things that Nell wouldn't do.
``The thing is that when they call `Action,' you have to just get out there and do it. I think I learned that from making movies as a child. You do it. I can walk out of a scene and turn it right off. I don't live the part.''
Even with the accolades, Foster's impression of acting hasn't changed that much. It still isn't enough. She formed her own company and has an unprecedented deal to produce three movies a year of her own choice. Her company, Egg, put up half of the $24 million needed to make ``Nell.''
She turned down ``Hot Zone,'' a thriller with Robert Redford, ``because you can't make that type of movie with a deadline. It was too rushed. They wanted it out by next summer.''
Next, she'll direct ``Home for the Holidays,'' a comedy starring Holly Hunter and Anne Bancroft about a Thanksgiving homecoming in which everything goes wrong.
``The thing is,'' Foster said with a flash of intensity, ``I can't easily play an untruth. With `The Accused,' I thought everyone wanted me to be the sweet cheerleader and I couldn't do that. I learned that I should forget what I think everyone wants and play it my way, play the truth.
``This world is not a safe place for people like Nell. She hasn't learned the rules yet. I have.''
by CNB