Jodie Foster Thought Robert De Niro Was ‘Really Uninteresting’ When They First Met on Taxi Driver Set

Robert De Niro might be a Hollywood titan, but Jodie Foster wasn’t impressed when she met him while making their 1976 film Taxi Driver.

Foster, now 63, remembered making the Martin Scorsese film at the Marrakech Film Festival on Sunday, Nov. 30, after receiving a tribute award. During a career-spanning conversation, she remembered how De Niro, 82, “took me under his wing” and brought her to coffee shops to run lines for the film, per Variety. But because of De Niro’s Method approach, she found him boring at first.

“We’d run the lines and run the lines a second and third time. And I’m sure maybe some of you have been here when Robert De Niro was here,” she said. “One of our greatest American actors, so proud to have worked with him — not the most interesting person on earth.”

She continued, “And at that time, he was very much in character, the way he was in those days.” In the movie, De Niro played Travis Bickle, the titular taxi driver who’s deeply depressed as he roams the city on his night shift.

“So he was really uninteresting and I remember having these lunches with him and being like, ‘What is happening? When can I go home?’ And he wouldn’t really be able to talk to me, so I would talk to the waiters and the people in the restaurants,” Foster remembered.

Foster said that she eventually had a breakthrough during De Niro’s strange process. “He finally walked me through improvisation by the time we had our third lunch together, and it opened my eyes to what acting could be,” she remembered. “And I realized at 12, ‘Oh, it’s my fault because I haven’t brought enough to the table.’ I’ve just been saying lines and waiting for my next line and acting naturally, but building a character is something different.”

Foster said it made her “excited” and when she met back up with her mom, she told her, “I’ve had this epiphany.” Foster, who had already been working widely as a child star (and made her film debut at age 6), said that from then on “everything changed.” 

Foster also told the audience that she “would have never have chosen to be an actor” if she hadn’t gotten into it as a child. She said she doesn’t “have the personality of an actor.”

“It’s actually just a cruel job that was chosen for me as a young person that I don’t remember starting. So right there, it makes my work a little bit different because I am not interested in acting just for the sake of acting,” she explained. 

Taxi Driver, which also starred Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel and Albert Brooks, grossed over $28 million on a budget of $1.9 million. It was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and nods for De Niro and Foster.

During the event, Foster said that because of her experience as a child star, she’s made an effort to reach out to child actors of later generations. “I want to take care of them because I know how dangerous it is,” she said. She also praised her mom for helping her create a “very firm delineation” between her public and private lives. 

Though at the time, there was controversy over Foster playing a sex worker at such a young age in such an adult film, she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that her biggest issue was her costume. “At the fitting, I was sniffing back tears because I had to wear those dumb shorts, platform shoes and halter tops,” she said. “It was everything I hated. I was a tomboy who wore knee socks. But I got over it.”