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Jodie Foster On Directing Her New Project ‘Money Monster’ Starring George Clooney And Julie Roberts [Video]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 23:00 PST, May 9, 2016

Two-time Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster is now behind the camera again, directing George Clooney and Julia Roberts in a thriller called Money Monster.

While Jodie Foster won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, the Hollywood star is now more into directing and is thoroughly enjoying her work.

Foster, 55, said, “Acting is a great film school but I still have so much to learn,” adding, “My directing career is young because I was acting!”

She has, of course, been involved in directing films before, in fact four movies, including the 2011 film The Beaver starring Mel Gibson and Jennifer Lawrence, but she says this time she’s making a “mainstream ‘popcorn’ thriller with guns and things.”

Speaking on the Today show, Foster said she was convinced Roberts would turn down the role in Money Monster, which opens in theaters on Friday. The film reunites George Clooney and Julia Roberts, who have previously starred together in Ocean’s Eleven, and according to Jodie, she only sent the script to Julia as a “long-shot.”

Saying she was convinced the Pretty Woman star would never say yes, Jodie said, “We’ll just get a quick no, and that’ll be that.”

Foster is thrilled that Roberts did actually say yes, saying that she is incredible in the movie and going on to say that Julia and George Clooney are both incredible and fantastic together.

“It’s an interesting dynamic that they have.”

Clooney plays the role of a smart-talking Wall Street financial expert turned TV host called Lee Gates, who gets taken hostage on air after a stock tip fails to pan out. Roberts plays the part of his show producer.

Reportedly, there is one scene that features Clooney doing some outrageous dance moves, and according to Foster, this was his own idea.

“He’s the one who came up with the dance idea,” she told the Toronto Sun.

“I was like, ‘If you want to dance, we’re going to set you up.’ It was the very first thing we shot in the movie. He really went for it. I was so happy that he allowed his inner white-boy funk to just come out and make a complete a** of himself, which he loves to do.”

While Foster will continue acting, she says directing is where she really wants to be.

“It’s a big commitment…,” she said, adding “I’m really ready now to focus more on that (directing) than anything else. Obviously I’ll always act, but directing is really where my heart is.”

As to the movie itself, Money Monster comes in the wake of another financial wake-up call, The Big Short, which revealed the background behind the housing crisis. However, the new film is a different kind of story and is more into the crime/thriller sphere of film-making.

Foster said the mortgage crisis was fresh in our minds and a lot of regulation has since happened to try to fix things, adding that Wall Street “is really back to business as usual with those regulations, which have created shorter margins for people.

“So they have to find new creative ways to make more amounts of money because it’s harder to make money now.”

As reported by the Daily Beast, Foster said that is where things get dangerous, adding that this was the inspiration behind the plot of Money Monster.

“What are people going to have to do now that banks are closing, that the federal government has closed some of these loopholes? Where are they going to start pulling their money from?”

Calling the components of Wall Street a “rigged system,” Foster goes on to say the system is “engineered specifically and the rules are written by the very few people who could ever understand the rules, so that they could benefit from them.”

Money Monster opens in theaters Friday and also stars Jack O’Donnell (Unbroken), Dominic West (The Wire, The Affair), Catriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Christopher Denham (Argo, Sound of My Voice), Lenny Venito (Men in Black II, St. Vincent), Chris Bauer (Tomorrowland), and Dennis Boutsikaris (The Bourne Legacy).

Enjoy the fast-moving trailer below.

[Photo Jodie Foster by Dimitrios Kambouris / Julia Roberts and George Clooney by Kevin Winter / Getty Images Entertainment]

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