Fresh Air · 2026-01-17 · 50 min · 9,076 words

Best Of: Jodie Foster / Tessa Thompson

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Jody Foster. She's been acting since she was three, and when she was nine, she was working on a Disney film with a trained lion who went off script and picked her up in his mouth. He held me horizontally and then flipped me around and shook me.

So I watched the entire film crew run in the opposite direction, sideways. Foster was twelve when she played a child prostitute in taxi driver, a role that would define her early career and make her one of the most celebrated actors of her generation. Also, we hear from Tessa Thompson. She stars in the new Netflix Murder Mystery Limited series, His and Hers.

She's built a career on characters and independent films and blockbusters, from Valkyrie in the Marvel Universe, to Bianca in the Creed films, to the calculating Charlotte in Westworld. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Support for Fresh Air comes from WHYY, presenting The Pulse, a weekly podcast about health and science. Each episode is full of great stories and big ideas, fueled by curiosity and wonder.

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