Jodie Foster says De Niro and Scorsese were ‘scared’ of her on Taxi Driver set

Actor was 12 when she starred in the classic psychological thriller

Jodie Foster has reflected on her time on the set of Taxi Driver, claiming that her young age proved awkward for co-workers Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.

The two-time Oscar-winning actor appeared on Tuesday’s edition (10 January) of the US late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Speaking to host Kimmel, Foster, 61, shared some of her experiences from being a child actor – namely, her landmark role in the Scorsese-directed Taxi Driver.

In the 1976 film, Foster played the challenging role of a child sex worker named Iris alongside De Niro, who starred as a lonely Vietnam veteran with declining mental health.

“I was 12. And they had to say things like, you know, Can you pull his fly down?’ And it was a little awkward,” Foster recalled.

Continuing her tale, she stated that because she had been on more film sets than Scorsese and De Niro at that time, despite being significantly younger than them, her elder colleagues were somewhat intimidated when having to interact with her.

“So I was like, ‘Whatever. Just, move over,’” she said of her reaction to their directions.

Jodie Foster on Jimmy Kimmel Live (YouTube / Jimmy Kimmel Live)

“Yeah, they were a little scared, Scorsese especially, who kept giggling every time he talked to me. He’d start giggling and De Niro had to take over,” she noted.

When Kimmel asked whether her dynamic with the veteran filmmaker was different today, she added: “Scorsese giggles with everybody.”

Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese (Getty Images)

Last week, the Silence of the Lambs star shared some further insight into being in Hollywood from such an early age and claimed that young stars have more freedom of self-expression today than in the 1970s and 1980s.

Speaking about the 20-year-old The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey, who has attended red-carpet events in a suit, Foster admitted it wouldn’t have been possible for her to dress in the same way.

“Because we weren’t free. Because we didn’t have freedom,” she explained to The Guardian.

Elsewhere in the interview, she shared her divisive take on Gen Z – the generation born roughly between 1997 and 2012.

Foster quipped that she found the group to be “really annoying, especially in the workplace”.

“They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.’ Or in emails, I’ll tell them, ‘This is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling?’ And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”