Foster in contact with her humanity

Jodie Foster believes that 'prodigious people necessarily have to stand outside each generation in order to bring that generation forward'. She was talking about the roles she has played - from the autistic Nell to the brilliant Ellie Arroway in her new movie Contact - but she might just as well be referring to herself.

It would be difficult to find many who would disagree that Foster was a Hollywood prodigy. At five, she became the Coppertone girl and went on to many television roles. At 12, she wowed Hollywood - and with it respected artists like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro - with a dazzling and shocking performance as an underaged streetwalker in the contentious Taxi Driver.

And while many child actors hit an invisible barrier during their teen years, Foster went on to bigger and better things including, of course, excellent performances and Oscars in The Accused and Silence Of The Lambs. Today, she is recognised as one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, an icon for feminists for having brought to women's roles a strength and depth that have been slow in coming.

'I want to create characters that are female characters, not just the sister of someone or the daughter of someone; roles that are fully fleshed, not just some woman tied on the track so that a man can save her,' she said during a video conference from Los Angeles last week.

'By that, I mean women whose lives are special to the film. That is something I think is very important to remember when we're making movies in Hollywood: that stories don't just happen to 50 per cent of the population, they happen to 100 per cent of the population.' Weakness is something that Foster does not seem to care for, either in her life or in the roles she plays. The video conference, if nothing else, revealed her poise, intelligence and resolution. Her answers always came back strong and with full confidence.

'I'm not very interested in weak characters,' she said. 'Even if it's a dumb blonde, I'd rather play a strong dumb blonde. Weakness is not the same as vulnerability. Vulnerability and fragility and emotions are very important.