What I've learnt: Jodie Foster

The actress on her lost youth, being an atheist and why she'll always love Mel Gibson

Forty-eight-year-old Jodie Foster has been acting since she was three, when she appeared in a bare-bottomed Coppertone advertisement on television. At that age she could already read and write and was enrolled in a programme for gifted children, echoed years later in Foster's own directing debut, Little Man Tate. From the age of eight she became the family's key breadwinner. Her first major film role was playing a pre-teen prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). She won Best Actress Oscars for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs , just two of the 55 films she's made. Known as a person of intimidating intelligence, she lives in Los Angeles with her two sons. The Beaver is the third feature film she has directed. She also stars in it as Mel Gibson's wife.

When you love somebody, you don't just walk away from them when they are struggling.For example, Mel is the most loved actor I have ever worked with on a movie. He's not saintly, and he's got a big mouth, and he'll do gross things your nephew would do. But I knew, the minute I met him, when we were making Maverick, that I would love him for the rest of my life. He's a real person, not a cardboard cutout, but he has troubles. I will always be grateful for the performance he gave in The Beaver. He brought a lifetime of pain from a severe alcohol problem to the character that I knew was part of his psyche.

I think we forget how much we know. It was a funny thing, not having directed for a while, to direct The Beaver. I found there was a lot that I brought to the table that I had forgotten about. When I direct, I have the biggest grin on my face, because I can't believe they pay me to do it!

Turning on and off is easy for me. I have a little ritual of a light beer to turn me off work at night. I don't want to wake up at 3am thinking about the film I'm working on. I love my job, but I don't need to keep working after six.

Being typecast has worked for me. I tend to play characters that come up against adversity and figure out a way, through their wits and tenacity and skill, to get out of it. I've never been the ingénue. Like my characters, I have been looking for answers all of my life. A lot of my questions are about my fears in my life. I'm not sure I'm an incredibly brave person, but I'm just no good at playing weak. I do dark dramas.

I now realise that acting wasn't a stretch for us kids. All of us had jobs of some sort. Everything was about the family, keeping the family going, surviving. I have no regrets about what people call my "lost youth" spent in studios. When I was a kid, we didn't have long lenses and kid actors didn't make $10-million.

Movies were in my blood. When I went to Yale to do a BA in Literature (she graduated with honours in 1985) I had hoped an Ivy League education would lead me to think that acting was dumb, but it has always been there and I think it will never go away. It does not take intelligence to be an actor - it's an emotional and physical process.

I keep my private life a closed book. I pretty much live like everybody else with a house and a car and a drive. It's simple and I like it. Having been a public figure since the age of six, I am sure that much of it is inbred. I've never talked about my personal life. It just kind of trivialises it when you see it in print.

I don't make movies so that I can do flashy, juicy performances. I have to find something in the story that's part of my progress, part of this little train I'm on.

Celebrity doesn't bother me. People are kind of "over" me now. They are more interested in Brad and Angelina, and that's just fine.

The price you pay for celebrity is like sticking pins in your eyes . . . getting dressed up and putting on make-up and photo shoots. I'm not really a clothes-and-make-up person. To me, that's just work.

Being a public figure can keep you tremendously shallow. There's a life of ease that's offered to you, where you never have to make a plane reservation or know how much a quart of milk costs and you can go to a different party every night. Or it can turn you into the opposite, which is somebody who is fiercely grounded and responsible because that feels real to you. I guess I fall into that category.

Having a gun in the house doesn't make you feel safer. They bought me one on Silence of the Lambs because I had to learn to shoot, but when the film was finished I took it to the police station and told them to destroy it. I got a dog instead. You can't fire a dog in the middle of the night.

I'm an atheist but I absolutely love religions and rituals. Even though I don't believe in God, we celebrate pretty much every religion in our family. The kids love it, and when they say: "Are we Jewish?" or "Are we Catholic?" I say: "Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't it fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar? - ©Marianne Gray

• The Beaver is released on July 29