‘My mom, from the time I was little, told me my career would be over by 40. So what do you do after that?’

For Jodie Foster, the answer was to just ‘keep going’. 58 years into her career, she’s currently enjoying a moment only a very exclusive club of actors will ever experience, starring in the first must-see television drama of 2024 in True Detective: Night Country while also eyeing up her third Oscar for Netflix biopic Nyad.

All in all, it’s an excellent time to be Jodie Foster but still it’s clear she doesn’t take anything for granted.

When we meet, Foster is right in the deep end of promoting the HBO and NOW thriller, the fourth instalment in the traditionally testosterone-driven True Detective franchise in which she stars as racist, selfish and horny Chief Liz Danvers.

‘She’s so awful,’ Foster laughs – and she means it. Danvers is anything but likeable. She wasn’t intended to be quite so unpleasant though, until Foster got her hands on the script – which was written for her in mind. Danvers was in part a creation inspired by Foster’s Silence of The Lambs FBI agent Clarice Starling.

‘I said, “I can’t play this character.” She was written for somebody who’s probably 42 and had just lost a child. She was quite soft in some ways, not able to cope or keep her emotions in check. And I said, “No, I don’t want to play that.”

Foster stars as Liz Danvers in True Detective: The Night Country (Picture: AP)

‘I had to reverse-engineer Danvers to mess her up and make her complicated.’

Despite being the two-time Oscar winner and being the big name to follow the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Vince Vaughn, and Mahershala Ali as the show’s big booking draw, from the get-go Foster recognised she needed to step back for professional boxer Kali Reis to shine as indigenous state trooper, Evangeline Navarro.

The Night Country is set in the fictional Alaskan town of Ennis, opening with the petrifying moment a group of scientists are attacked at their lab and then completely vanish, inspired by a real-life mystery. They’re later discovered in a ‘corpsicle’ – aka an ice block made up of frozen bodies – which is just as gruesome as it sounds.

Navarro is convinced the disappearance is linked to a cold murder case which has haunted her for years but Danvers isn’t convinced.

Everyone is talking about Foster’s co-star Kali Reis (Picture: AP)
‘The key thing for me was creating someone that could support Kali’s character who really is the central journey in the story.’

Reis’ casting is an extraordinary tale. She’s best known as a champion boxer, only starring in an independent film (about a professional boxer) and was discovered for True Detective after being spotted on Instagram.

‘She still holds her title, she still hasn’t retired – an extraordinary woman,’ Foster says, her face lighting up with total admiration.

‘It was a first for her but she’s has everything she needed from the world of boxing; the discipline, the strategy, and the endurance that it takes to be an actor is a similar thing.

‘Maybe that’s better, right? You don’t have these preconceived ideas from drama school. She is really emotionally available and that’s really the key which you can really see that in Navarro. She’s somebody who’s very much in touch with her and her own feelings and with the spirit world and, and that side of yourself is very vulnerable. That’s just magic on screen.’

As the Night Country title suggests, the black sky is another key character throughout True Detective. Ennis is encased in uninterrupted darkness and a relentless freeze for weeks on end.

The teeth chattering and icy breaths weren’t just for effect; the entire cast felt the brutality of filming in Reykjavik, Iceland during its lowest temperatures.

‘It really was that cold,’ recalled Foster. ‘For the most part there moments where you couldn’t even speak where your mouth just doesn’t move so you put warm things on, you could put like these little heating hot pads that attach to your body, but doesn’t matter, you still have to talk and breathe.’

It’s a far cry from the scorching temperatures of the Dominican Republic where she filmed Nyad, the Netflix movie following Diane Nyad (played by Annette Bening), the astounding athlete who swam non-stop from Cuba to Florida aged 64 with sheer determination as well as her best friend and champion Bonnie Stoll (Foster) guiding her to the finish line.

It’s earned Foster her fifth Oscar nomination and could see her picking up her third Academy Award, after taking the prize home for The Accused (1982) and Silence of The Lambs (1992).

As well as Diane Nyad’s unthinkable triumph, the film is a celebration about the unique bonds found in the lesbian community.

Foster is in contention for her third Oscar for her performance in Nyad (Picture: AP)
‘I know Diana and Bonnie from barbecues and from Christmas parties, and I know them through their kindness, who they are in their community.

‘There is a phenomenon of women of a certain age, maybe my mom’s generation a little bit older than me, who had to choose, sadly, between their families and our friends.

‘They would never be accepted or understood fully by the community so they made her own communities. In the lesbian community, that’s your exes, they become your best friends.

‘There’s something beautiful about these two women who didn’t have children didn’t end up having partners who have such a commitment to each other, that they will be the last people that they see when they die. That bond is really misunderstood so it was really wonderful to see it on screen, and to have people root for it.’

Nyad has been released at a particularly thriving time for LGBTQ+ story-telling. All of Us Strangers has captured gay trauma and made audiences of all genders weep in cinemas. ‘I cried so hard at that,’ says Foster.

Foster’s been married to Alexandra Hedison since 2014 (Picture: Getty Images)

‘I cried so hard at All of us Strangers’ (Picture: Searchlight)

Foster didn’t need a Heartstopper growing up (Picture: Rachel Lightsey)Then television is also bursting with authentic queer stories such as Heartstopper and Sex Education – two of the biggest dramas on Netflix in its entire history.

‘We’re getting better instead of worse,’ says Foster.

‘I feel hopeful that that there are these new voices but that also means there’s a grievance, people that are unhappy about that, too. It’s interesting that that’s co-existing.’

But despite a glorious spectrum of queer roles available for young actors today, which are celebrated by so many both in and outside the LGBTQ+ community, Foster doesn’t look back and wish she was given the same opportunity when she was a child star. Still at the top of her game in a 58 year career, she insists she didn’t need a Heartstopper.

‘More than anything, I was just trying to survive as an actor and a public figure in the 60s and the 70s, 80s, 90s.

‘I always believed that the art form, making movies was somehow going to be the solution to everything; it was the one thing that could come out of the screen and grab people and make them hold each other.

‘Maybe that’s just being too optimistic, idealistic, but I really do feel like films have an opportunity to connect people in ways that nothing else ever has. For me as a young person, that’s what I was always looking for. I was always looking for my story.’