NOAH ADAMS, Host: There's a movie coming out this month that has language at its center, strange, lonely and often lovely words.

[clip from film]

1st ACTOR: [unintelligible - the girl's language is known only to her]

2nd ACTOR: Repeating words of 1st Actor.

1st ACTOR: Again repeats unintelligible sounds.

2nd ACTOR: Oh, I've got it, Miss Arna, big. So what's K.A. Tree in the wind. You're a tree in the wind.

1st ACTOR: [laughter]

ADAMS: In this scene from the movie titled Nell, a local doctor, played by Liam Neeson, is talking with a woman named Nell. He is learning part of her very private language. The movie also stars Natasha Richardson as a psychologist, also trying to learn about Nell.

Nell was discovered in a cabin out in the mountains of North Carolina, after her mother died. They had lived an isolated life together. Her mother partly disabled by a stroke. Nell had never been to town, never talked to a stranger. The movie's based on a play called Ideoglassia [sp] about the mysteries of secret language.

Jodie Foster's movie production company, Egg Pictures, made this film. Jodie Foster was the co-producer and plays the role of Nell. She talked with us earlier this week about choosing what pictures to produce and what roles to play.

[interviewing] How do you know when it's right for both you and your company?

JODIE FOSTER: Well, you know, I hate to say it, but I kinda am my company. So if I like it, that's sort of how it works.

ADAMS: But is it a tingling thing for you, or is a logical analysis of the screenplay? How do you know, how do you know this character' s right for you?

Ms. FOSTER: For me as an actress? If it moves me, chances are there' s something there, there's something magical there. If I don't get it and if there's nothing in my life that I can analogize it to, then somebody else should probably play it.

ADAMS: Was it clear to you what in your life could be - could resonate with this particular role?

Ms. FOSTER: Yes and maybe they were more abstract, philosophical questions, but things that I had been thinking about. You know, the original interest in this story was a very simple idea. You have a woman who wears her emotions on the outside. I, personally, Jodie, you know, spend my whole life wearing my emotions on the inside and trying to protect them by sort of cynicism and socialization and - but sometimes I wonder who I might have been had I not known that when you cry, you should be ashamed of it or that you're supposed to think your body is dirty and you're not - you're supposed to be inhibited about it or any number of things that we grow up with in our society. I just wonder who I might have been.

These characters, the two characters played by Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, one a medical doctor and the other a psychologist, come asking their own questions about who this creature is. And they see her as a kind of a tubular rosa, the way parents see their children. They think that they're these little vacuums and you're just gonna fill them up with all your stuff. And what they find is, is that this woman stands up and walks the way she walks and talks the way she talks and says `I'm different than you thought I was.'

ADAMS: The - in learning the language for the movie - is it the language that you speak as Nell, a written out, defined language? Were you in fact, translating thought into a real language?

Ms. FOSTER: Oh yes, it's a real language written by the writer, Bill Nicholson [sp] and we sort of collaborated, all of us, Michael Apthead [sp], the director, myself and Rene Missile [sp], into changing it and making decisions about, for example, when does she learn consonants because when she learns consonants, then perhaps language will become more intelligible for us later on. There was a real architecture to her learning process, her learning the real world and her language changing because of her contact with the real world.

ADAMS: And the audience learning her language as they go along.

Ms. FOSTER: With her.

ADAMS: Yes.

Ms. FOSTER: You know something that I love about this piece is, you know, we all speak English, so we think, you know if I talk to you and say, `How you doin'? Nice shirt,' that somehow, we've had a real interaction and that somehow we've communicated and we know each other, who we are. And, the only thing that we've learned from each other, really, is the language that connects us together.

The difference with her language is that the only way to learn her language is to find out where she comes from, who she's loved and who she's been influenced by and what moves her and what makes her the person that she is. And once you understand that and come to know her history, then you will understand the language effortlessly.

ADAMS: Is it giving away too much of the movie to demonstrate some of her language?

Ms. FOSTER: Oh sure, no, no not at all. I mean, I'll go to the Biblical references, for example, chances are that her mother might have been able to read the Bible through memory and been able to say the words fairly well. And, you know, maybe every night she had a passage where she said, `A sinful nation, a people born of iniquity.' And through the ears of a child listening to that, as being lulled to sleep, there' s a melody there. She doesn't know what it means. But she knows it sounds like [sounds] you know. So the things that are consonants that are coming out feel like a big event, feel like sort of a wonderful glottal stopping that she doesn't hear in the rest of her language. And she may just say this over and over again to herself when she' s eating or when she's walking, because it feels to her like something her mom might have said to her before she was going to sleep.

ADAMS: As an actor, was it technically hard to do the language for you?

Ms. FOSTER: Coming up with the stuff I think was difficult and challenging and wonderful, a real educational experience. But, actually performing it was as easy as breathing. It's a beautiful sounding language that has more to do with how you feel than what you're saying.

ADAMS: Um-hmm.

Ms. FOSTER: She uses very physical rituals that I think, give her a certain sensation. I know, for example, if I, if I, sometimes I learn my lines by getting on my stair master. Why? Because when my adrenaline is up, somehow, and I say the words, somehow they feel much more connective and all that kind of stuff. Well, that's a silly ritual. But we all have rituals like that. Sometimes if you do a gesture, you can feel the feeling. And if you want to get somewhere and you want to feel a certain feeling, if you can figure out what the gesture is that brings that feeling to you, then maybe you can access it that way, through ritualizing it.

ADAMS: As an actor, did you, I'm interested in this conflict, if it is a conflict between being an actor and being a producer, a co- producer and having it be your company. Did it ever happen that you' d be getting close to overtime for the crew and there would be a scene, and you would say to yourself as an actor, `Gee, I can really do that better.' And that's part of you talking. And the other part is saying, `Ooh we're going into overtime here and it's gonna cost money.' And does that happen?

Ms. FOSTER: Well, sure and you, you weigh things. The best thing about being a producer and an actor at the same time is that you can protect the screenplay and protect the process by hiring the right people, by making sure that everything's well-prepared, by making sure that you have everything in place for all the what if's. You know, what it rains, what if it snows, what if everybody's stuck in the mud?

But in terms of say, for example, re-shooting something, yeah, at some points I had to step in and say, `Look, you know, this shot is not good enough. This is the beginning of the movie and it's not good enough and we should break out the helicopters, bring 'em back, reshoot the scene. And if it means, you know, not being able to get coverage on another scene, then we may have to sacrifice that.'

ADAMS: You wouldn't in this situation, have a discussion, a disagreement with the director and being saying to yourself, `Wait a minute, I' m the boss here, ultimately. It's my company making it.' But as an actor you'd be having a discussion, a disagreement with the director.

Ms. FOSTER: Well, there were moments of personal conflict where I say, you know, when do I step in and when don't I? When is it my business? When isn't it my business? When should I let this go because ultimately, it's not my movie? It's Michael's movie. If it's apples and oranges and that meaning, it's one solid actor compared to another solid actor in casting, and the director feels one way and you feel another way, well you always go with the director. It's his movie. If you feel that the film is on the wrong track and that it will suffer dramatically and that the vision of the film will suffer, it means you've probably hired the wrong director.

ADAMS: Um-hmm.

Ms. FOSTER: And one of the rules that I had was between 9:00 in the morning or 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night until we got to dailies, I could not function as a full on producer because I would have sabotaged my relationship with the other actors and with the director. I couldn't, for example, you know, while Liam and Natasha were doing a sequence, I couldn't walk onto the set and touch my watch and say, `You know, we're going overtime now,' because I, of course, that would compromise my relationship with them.

So, I just had to make sure that we were all very up front and very confrontative about what we were feeling and that we could really make good rules about how to get the best, the best collaboration.

ADAMS: Jodie Foster. Her new film, Nell, opens later this month.

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[funding credits given]

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