Question for French speaking people
This 1997 interview with Miss Foster is in French and has her speaking it. I see from the comments how people say how well she speaks French, so I thought I’d ask any French speakers here, just how good is she? Can she really hold her own against a native?
Jodie Foster can speak broken French to me anytime, anywhere.
Hey baby, peel me a grape.
Her French is essentially perfect, and she doesn’t even have the slighest accent. I noticed a couple flaws because I was paying attention, in particular an anglicism : she used the French verb “balancer” as if its meaning was identical to “to balance” in English (FTR she should have used “équilibrer” instead).
If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t guess that she isn’t French. My first assumption upon hearing this interview was that she had been brought up in France (I was wrong).
I had no clue she was bilingual until I read this thread.
Ah, so the horrid accent of her character in Elysium is the character’s bad accent! 
Huh. Jodie Foster has a lot of secrets, and not just the obvious ones.
And here she is singing in French:
Secret? She lived over there for years, right after college. According to her brother, with a Frenchwoman about fifteen years older. As for Elysium, I’d say she’s likely rusty as she left France, what, two decades ago?
If I only listened to the audio without knowing it was her, I’d think she was French. Putain d’Parisienne too.
Her mannerisms/body language and voice tone are noticeably different when speaking French or English. Does that happen to anyone else?
So how good is Sandra Bullock’s German?
Concur with clairobscur. I’m particularly impressed with her complete lack of any Anglo accent - in my experience even British/US born-and-raised people who’ve lived in France for decades and speak perfect French hardly ever lose that final touch of it (unless their own parents were French and they were raised in both languages, I suppose). The lady has an ear for language.
She also attended a French-language school, the Lycée Français de Los Angeles. (The school has programs from preschool through high school, but I can’t find anything saying how many years she attended the school.)
I thought it interesting that the Wikipedia mentions she dubbs herself for the French language versions of her films, so that in itself should’ve answered my question.
According to the website for the school, Foster entered at 6 and graduated at 18 as the valedictorian.
I see that the following celebrities also attended Lycée Français de Los Angeles:
[ul]
[li]Jessica Biel[/li][li]Tatum O’Neal[/li][li]Claire Danes[/li][li]Shannen Doherty[/li][li]Molly Ringwald[/li][li]Leelee Sobiesk[/li][li]Noah Hathaw[/li][li]Shavar Ross[/li][li]Christie Brinkley[/li][/ul]
Shavar Ross? Really I wonder how good Arnold’s BFF Dudley speaks French 
Thanks for the feedback.
I love these kinds of videos. Mila Kunis can cuss me out in Russian any time she wants to.
I vaguely recalled that, in her youth, Jodie attended a French immersion school in Los Angeles. That is, she was speaking exclusively French in school every day for many years.
Dewey Finn seems to confirm that.
…if her French isn’t very good, does that mean I have to shoot someone?
That didn’t work out so well for Hinckley.
Anyone know how well this guy is doing?
(Monsieur Jean Malkovich)If he ever got into Tuvan Throat Singing or something, I reckon he’d still be identifiable as John Malkovich. Something about the rhythm and the gaps.
At Yale, she took upper-level French courses.
She and I were at Yale at the same time (Christ, I’m as old as JODIE FOSTER???) and I took upper-level French courses, too. I was a Comp Lit major and knew enough French to participate in chatty seminar courses and write papers on Moliere and Racine and Robbe-Grillet.
Now I can’t talk French for shit. I assume the bitch is still fluent because she’s rich enough to hang out in France whenever she wants.
My old man TOLD me to go to law school, but noooooo…
but you had to go be an actor like Ms. Foster, because that’s so lucrative? 