Jodie Foster talks Mel Gibson and ‘The Beaver’

Jodie Foster’s allegiance to friend and colleague Mel Gibson has been well-documented. But as the promotional efforts for their movie, “The Beaver,” continue to ramp up ahead of its May 6 release, it’s something that she will undoubtedly be reiterating, as she did in a recent video interview with me.
I had the opportunity to talk first-hand with Foster about Gibson and her reasons for casting him in “The Beaver,” a film that Foster both directed and co-stars in as Gibson’s wife.
In the first portion of a multi-part video interview, the actress explains what made her immediately think of her “Maverick” co-star for the role of a deeply depressed man who turns to a beaver puppet for solace.
“It’s a film about a man who’s struggling,” she says. “And I think that he is someone who has struggled in his life with many things, and who’s really interested in coming to terms with that.”

After the jump, watch another clip of Foster discussing her feelings about the recent 30th anniversary of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan — a news story that she became forever intwined with due to John Hinckley, Jr.’s well-publicized interest in her — and why she’ll never set up a Twitter account.
The rest of my interview with Foster will be posted here in Celebritology in the coming days.