It's just after 2pm when Jodie Foster arrives at a seventh floor suite at Cannes' Carlton Hotel, dressed in a chic silver-grey dress and sandals. Somehow, she's still smiling. The double Oscar winner is in the French city to promote The Beaver: it's her third film as director, and her first in 16 years, since 1995's Home for the Holidays.
'Personal movies are hard to get off the ground,' the actress says, when I ask what kept her. 'They're hard to get financed. A lot of the journey is about you trying to fight uphill.'
For Foster, 48, her 'fight uphill' has been as treacherous as climbing Mount Everest in slippers. Never mind the three years The Beaver took to launch; she might as well be carrying a problem child, such was the reaction to the film. Critics hated it and audiences ignored it (in the US, it took less than US$1 million).
However the spin-doctors play it, there is only one reason why: Mel Gibson. A virtual Hollywood pariah for a series of inflammatory remarks over the past three years, Gibson is the film's millstone.
Having previously co-starred with him in 1994 western Maverick, Foster has been good friends with Gibson ever since. And you can't argue with her logic in casting him. His performances have frequently verged on insanity (from Mad Max to Lethal Weapon) and he's tailor-made for the role of Walter Black. A suicidal father-of-two, Black's radical solution to overcoming depression is puppet therapy. In a moment of madness, he slips on a beaver hand puppet and begins to let the cuddly creature do his talking - a bizarre act of ventriloquism that revitalises his relationship with his estranged wife (played by Foster).
However suited he is to the role, Foster is left with the difficult task of defending Gibson's utterances when others have shunned him. 'I can't excuse Mel's behaviour. Only he can explain that. We're all responsible for our own behaviour,' she says. 'But I do know the man that I know. He's been a friend for many, many years. As a friend, he is kind and loyal and thoughtful and I can spend hours on the phone with him, talking about life. And he's complex - and I appreciate his complexity.'