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Jodie Foster had to undergo psychological tests before playing 12-year-old prostitute in ‘Taxi Driver’
Jodie Foster has claimed that she had to undergo thorough psychiatric testing in order to perform her breakout role in Taxi Driver in 1976.
Foster received her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a young sex worker in the Robert De Niro-led picture.
It was a difficult task for the young Foster, so she had to be well prepared. “People thought I was too young to play the role of a sex worker,” she says in an interview with OK! magazine.
The 58-year-old actress described how she met with a UCLA psychiatrist to guarantee that she would not be emotionally traumatized.
“People thought I was too young to play the part of a prostitute and people — lawyers, that is — in the government of California, wanted to make sure I was psychologically ready. I had to do some tests,” she recalled.
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“For me, it’s a film which was a kind of transformation in the cinema, it was the golden age of American films, it was an arthouse film and I was very proud to be in it. It was destiny, it was fate and I was very lucky.”
Taxi Driver tells the story of Bickle (Robert De Niro), a cab driver who dreamed of ruthlessly cleaning up New York’s streets.
The actress, who went on to win Best Actress Oscar for The Accused and Silence of the Lambs, has previously spoken out about Taxi Driver.
Her role on The Graham Norton Show in 2016 made a lot of people “uncomfortable” on set.
“I was 12 years old and had made more movies than anyone else on the film at that point,” she recounted.
“They were very uncomfortable about my character. Nobody knew how to direct me.
“Scorsese would say something like, ‘Unzip his fly’ and just start laughing and not know what to do, so he would hand it over to [co-star] Robert De Niro and then Robert would tell me what to do. And he was even more ‘Robert De Niro’ then, even quieter and more strange.”
Jodie received a special lifetime achievement award Palme d’Or award at the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival in July.
Since beginning her career in the early 1970s, she has received several awards for her work.
