When we sat down to talk with Foster, we didn't press for information about the exact parentage of her son, Charles. But when the topic turned to her toddler, this single mom's eyes lit up. She happily discussed the challenges and joys of raising a child, and even broke into song when describing her son's favourite tunes.

Foster also spoke in depth about her professional life, from how she chooses projects to whom she sees as role models. What follows are some of our questions, and her intriguing answers.

Foster: I've always been picky, but now I'm even pickier because he is my priority and my focus, and I want to spend as much time with him. So unless I feel really passionate and really strongly about a project, I just...I don't want to get in the car to go.

Foster: Well, I think the adage is true. You can have everything, but you just can't do everything well. And I think the first thing to suffer is your work. I think you just have to embrace that chaos and know that the creative quality to your work is probably higher because you have a child. But the amount of hours, the focus, just can't possibly be there. So you learn to be efficient with your time.

Foster: I guess I thought I was one of these people that has very serious do's and don'ts about how people are supposed to act and rules about children and their behavior. And now I realize that he can just work me. I just fall for him.

Foster: I do some home videos, but I have no desire to put him on camera in any other way.

Foster: It's going to be a really weird thing to grow up having a famous parent. I just don't know what you can do about that except try to explain it to him when he comes home crying. I think it is much harder to be the child of a famous actor than to be a child actor, and so I hope that I have all the sensitivity and patience to deal with that.

Foster: It changes how you schedule your time and it changes your focus. I mean, I don't know if it's a hormonal problem, but if I'm on the telephone and he's in the room, I don't remember a word anyone said.

Foster: I think so, but she was especially a role model for women at that time [1862]. You have to remember that her hands were still bound by convention. She still believed that you set a table a certain way and that there were certain moral boundaries that you didn't cross. Those are boundaries that we don't necessarily have anymore, as modern women. I think that we have a much more checkered society now, which allows us more freedom to be who we are.

Foster: Our barriers are much more subtle, psychological barriers now. They're all of the wounds that we carry from our young days into the workplace, and we spend our lives trying to make sense of them. In terms of Hollywood, there are fewer roles, wonderful roles, for women. But in my case, I'm lucky enough to find one every two years, and that's all I need in order to be able to feel passionate about something.

People say to me, "Are you stereotyped because you only play strong characters? Even though your characters may be different -- Nell is certainly different from Ellie Arroway in Contact, who is different from Anna Leonowens -- they're all very strong characters. Do you feel like that's kind of a Jodie cliché?" The truth is that they are central characters, and if you're going to be a central character in a movie, you're going to be a strong character. In the same way, Harrison Ford's characters might be different, but they're all central, and that makes them strong. So I don't feel that strength somehow is some strange identity for women that we have to reserve only for one character.

Foster: I act characters that are different from myself, that teach me something, and that inspire me to be brave in ways that I'm not. I direct movies about who I am -- about my life, the people I know, the songs I listen to, the tone that my life has taken -- so that I can make sense of my own life and communicate it and put it up there. So there are very opposite reasons why I do both.

Foster: I have a film I'm directing that's called Flora Plum, which is the story of a budding trapeze artist in a circus in the '30s in Depression America.

Foster: I don't see myself personally as a leader, but I assume a leadership position in my company [Egg Pictures]; certainly as a director. I find that your leadership style has everything to do with your personality. I'm somebody that likes to talk and likes to collaborate. A lot of directors don't. A lot of directors like to just tell you what to do. But I really like to hear other people's responses and hear their instincts and what they're having trouble with, and then try to incorporate my vision into that.

Foster: I suppose it's true that because I came from a business that was all men when I was growing up, that men were my mentors. They were the ones who taught me the gentlemanly art of being in the film business -- you know, you don't steal people's ideas, you always give people credit, you always say please and thank you and send thank-you notes.

I'll never forget when I walked in to direct my first movie for [Orion], and I had to sell it to Eric Pleskow... And he said, "Look, I've read the script and I'm investing in you as a director. You don't need to sell me a song and a dance. Your movie probably won't make any money, but the whole point is I'm here in the long haul for you..."

Foster: I have a partner in my company, Meg LeFauve, who is a producer at Egg Pictures and who runs my company. She is just so creative and has such great taste. I can't say she's my protégé because we're the same age, but I learn from her and she learns from me, and I think we just make a great team.

Foster: Well, I have this really outdated philosophy about success in a corporate structure, and you're going to think I'm really romantic and a fool, but here it goes. I think that if you are moral and you're right and you have the right ethics, that eventually somewhere down the line you're going to end up being successful.

In our business, anyway, you're always going up and down, and at some point you're going to find yourself down. You're going to need somebody to say, "Hey, I remember you. You're the one that treated me right, and I'm going to lend a hand out to you..." It's your responsibility to conduct yourself ethically throughout the process -- always ethics first -- so that somewhere down the line, somebody's going to let you live up to your own potential.

Foster: Yeah, I really do. I mean, I think I try to be the best person I can. Lord knows, I make big mistakes. I make big mistakes all the time. But I try to be as honest and direct as I can.

What do you feel is the greatest accomplishment of your career? What stands out when you look back?

Foster: My greatest accomplishment, I think, was being able to direct my first movie [Little Man Tate]. I was very lucky to be involved with producers who knew me and saw me in some ways as their prodigal daughter and gave me the opportunity when they didn't know what I would have done with it. They had no idea what was coming ...

The best movie that I think I've made [as an actress] is Taxi Driver. Even though I wasn't in a lot of the film, it's one of those movies from the '70s that I think people will remember in 40 and 50 and 60 years. It's just incredible to be involved in a film that's really part of the canon.

Foster: Yale was an incredibly important time for me, and I think that's probably true of anything you do between 17 and 22. Those are the seminal times that really make up who you are, when you figure out how you really feel about things... The truth is, I don't remember a single thing I learned there, and yet it was the contact with other people -- especially other people my age that were different from me -- that shaped me in ways that I can't even imagine.

How do you manage your free time when you're on location?

Foster: Well, when I'm on location I have no free time. I pretty much come home from work and I eat something and I go to bed. And we usually work a six-day week, so on Sunday I do a lot of sleeping, and I watch TV and do some crossword puzzles. That's pretty much the only thing I have time to do when I'm on location.