Jodie Foster suffers from ‘slight’ OCD: ‘It’s not great for acting!’

4 December 2023

Jodie Foster suffers from “slight” OCD.

Jodie Foster suffers from ‘slight’ OCD

The ‘Silence of the Lambs’ actress and director, 61, also admitted she is “hyperfocused” in her work and loves crafting to do lists, which she said are things that “aren’t great” for acting.

She told Interview magazine: “I mean, there are two different sides of me, and the directing side is much truer to who I am.

“I have an opinion about everything. I’m very compartmentalized. I’m a future thinker and a big picture person.

“I like to organise. I like to make lists. I’m slightly hyperfocused and OCD. And all of those things aren’t really great for acting.

“I’ve had to learn how to sit on them. So it’s more comfortable for me to be a director, but obviously it’s harder for me to get movies off the ground, and it’s a longer process.

“So I think maybe if I have one regret in my career, it’s that I wasn’t able to make more movies as a director, but I’m really proud of the films that I made. They weren’t these gigantic hits, but they’re really personal stories that mean a lot to me.”

Jodie’s films as a director include ‘The Beaver’ starring Mel Gibson and ‘Money Monster’ featuring George Clooney as a kidnapped TV finance advisor.

She said about how she struggled to make the latter film: “‘Money Monster’ was the first genuine studio movie that I’d ever made, perhaps the last, as a director.

“It’s hard because it’s your baby and you love everything about it. The whole post-production was so difficult because it did have a strange tone.

“It had a lot of comedy, and I guess there was a thriller element to it.

“And it was, in my mind, more of an ensemble movie. It also had a kind of a theatre-piece quality, which were none of the things that anybody who was selling the movie thought was a plus.

“It was tough for me. It was a big fight.”

Jodie also said she has given up the idea she had to be in pain to give a quality performance on camera.

She added: “When I was younger, I thought I had to be miserable in order to give a good performance.

“Now I understand that I have to be having a good day. So once they say, ‘Cut’, I’m thinking about something else. And then I really like to have fun.”