Jodie Foster recalls a very awkward moment on the set of Taxi Driver

“Okay, I’ll unzip his pants…”

Fifty years ago it came out Taxi Driverand for this extraordinary anniversary, Martin Scorsese met up with Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro and Paul Schrader at the Tribeca Festival in New York this weekend.

The opportunity for the actress to remember her first major role in the cinema, a strange experience since she played Iris, a very young prostitute who crossed paths with Travis Bickle, when she was only 12 years old. Sordid, yes. And even on the set, the sulfurous context of Taxi Driver caused some discomfort. A memory remains elsewhere “engraved in memory” by Jodie Foster…

The actress, who was also only 12 years old, remembers this scene where she had to open the fly of the character played by Robert De Niro:

“Martin was trying to explain to me what I should do, but he and Robert kept laughing nervously” Foster said during this reunion (via Variety). “Robert said: ‘I’ll explain it to him’, then he started laughing too. They were so nervous… It must be said that I was very young… So much so that they couldn’t even give me directions!”

Faced with their embarrassment, young Jodie Foster ended up taking matters into her own hands:

“I ended up saying, ‘Well, okay, I’ll unzip his pants, then I’ll do this and I’ll go over there. What’s the problem?“

During the meeting, Martin Scorsese also praised the impressive confidence of the young actress, whom he had met at just 11 years old on the set of Alice is no longer here :

“She already had incredible authority. She would come in and say, ‘Yes, I can do that. No problem.’ It was really impressive for his age..”

Jodie Foster confided that her vocation was born when she discovered the cinema of Scorsese. While still a child, she saw Mean Streets and it was a revelation: “I saw Mean Streets when I was a kid…and that was it. I absolutely wanted to be a part of that universe.” Three years later, she would tour with Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.