Jodie Foster Quotes

I still want to do features, but on my own terms.

Sometimes being an actor is being a song in someone else's mixtape, so I really understand why more and more actors are making films of their own.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

When I was doing something on someone else's dime, I was inclined to try to anticipate what they wanted. I knew that wasn't what an artist was supposed to do. In funding my own music, I found my voice.

Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

But if I really want to produce my own work and tell stories, then I will.

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.

I'm sure my children will be artists. I hope they will direct because it is much more interesting. Acting is great, and I love it, but it is very passive, and it depends on other people's desire, and you depend on others all the time.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

It was always my dream to be a director. A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone's disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

I don't want money to ever drive my career. I want my career to be driven by what I want to do in art.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I have to be my own artist. I need the world to know who I am, especially for music. When it comes to acting, that is a whole other story. I have no complaints; that's a team effort. It's not just me, it's everyone. But when it comes to music, it is solo; that's all me.

At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.

I want to be a genuine artist who has a say in what I do.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I don't believe that all actors should end up being directors.

I did not necessarily feel that Hollywood was interested in what I wanted to do. They wanted me to do what they wanted to do.

In the end, for me, music is such an internal thing that to let the outside world influence would be against my modus operandi.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

When I get to make a movie, I really try to make it on my own terms.

To be honest, I'm selfish as an artist. I'm doing what I want to do and what I want to hear.

We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.