Jodie Foster Remembers That Weekend She Hosted SNL and Met Andy Warhol

Jodie Foster wears Dress (worn as coat), Sweater, and Skirt Bottega Veneta. Ring Jodie’s Own.

Jodie Foster was fresh off her hosting gig at Saturday Night Live—at that point, the youngest to ever do it—when she and her mother met up with Andy Warhol and Catherine Guinness at the Pierre Hotel to discuss life as a 14-year-old movie star, even though she didn’t really feel like one. “The years between 14 to 16, you’ve got all those pimples on your forehead, you don’t know what to do with your hands, your legs are really long, but your torso looks funny,” she says today. But in that year alone, Foster had starred in Freaky Friday, Bugsy Malone, and a little movie called Taxi Driver, cementing a career that is still going strong today. Here, she revisits that amazing—and awkward—moment.

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“SNL was what was happening then. It was Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and every single person that you’ve ever heard of that was on SNL in those days, because it was a transition between the two groups. So it was an extraordinary show, but I was really nervous. I’d never done live anything. About 10 minutes before I went on, I was drinking an Orange Julius, and the whole thing fell all over my shirt. I didn’t have time to change my clothes, and I was all sticky and broke out in hives because it didn’t go perfectly. So yeah, it wasn’t this wonderful experience for me. It was more like, ‘Oh wow, this is why I don’t like live theater.’”

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“It’s funny when people ask kids questions like that. Let’s just face it. It’s weird.”

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“They had me do weird things on SNL because I was a kid and they couldn’t figure out what to do with me. So they had me, at 14, sitting on some dude’s lap with pigtails on pretending to be a child. So the show was a little awkward.”

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“Andy was a really lovely person. I know there was a whole other side to him, and to The Factory and all the stuff that they did, but where I met him and the place that he met me psychologically, he was just really sweet, gentle, optimistic, hopeful, and almost childlike. The Bloody Mary thing was a joke, but it was a cute joke to make with a kid.”

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“I can’t think of anything I hate more than shopping. I’ve always hated it. My wife says I spend about $25 on clothes a year. Just underwear, bras, and socks. That’s about it.”

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“Weirdly, I love dress-up. I love Halloween. I like putting paint on my face for my team, the Green Bay Packers.”

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“I just saw Henry Winkler the other day, and he is the nicest man on earth. I think I was starstruck by television people, and now I can officially say I’m not particularly starstruck, except for writers. That’s something where it’s even hard for me to talk, and I get really insecure and feel stupid. Words have always been my first love, and I’m a little jaded by celebrity culture.”

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“I had worn makeup since I was three because I did television, so my whole experience with makeup was, you sit in the chair and it’s usually about 4:30 in the morning, and sometimes the trailer’s outside, so it’s freezing cold and somebody’s putting thick pancake on you, and they roll it on wet on your body, which is uncomfortable. When you get home at night, after 10 hours of work, you’ve got orange pancake running down the sink. And in this era, look, I wear makeup occasionally when I go out or something, but it is a funny thing that we didn’t question it until this new era of gender consciousness. Who said we were supposed to do that? Who started it?”

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“I did it, and then after Little Man Tate, I didn’t really want to do it again. The only reason I acted in it was because I knew I could get it off the ground. There was no other way for me to get it financed.”

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Hair and Makeup: Brett Freedman using Laura Geller Beauty at Celestine Agency.

Nails: Alex Jachno at Opus Beauty.

Studio Management: Heather Rasmussen.

Fashion Assistant: Catie Lane.

Tailor: Diana Aghajanyan.