Jodie Foster Lifts Off

In fact, she's thinking about giving up on producing for the moment, not taking on any projects that aren't her own directing efforts. While she admires what people like Mel Gibson and Ron Howard have been able to achieve with their companies, she doesn't want to make Egg Pictures, which has produced projects like Nell and Waking the Dead, into the next big movie company.

She says she started the company in 1992 not because she was "salivating for control," but because she had seen so many movies tank because they weren't handled the best way. For instance, her directorial debut Little Man Tate got caught up in the financial downfall of its movie studio in 1991. "It made me not want to be affiliated with any big studio and to make my projects independently," she says.

The catch to producing independent films, however, is that they are much harder to get made and can get caught up in snags. While Foster did fine with Home for the Holidays, which starred Holly Hunter, Claire Danes and Robert Downey Jr., and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, she has spent the last five years trying to make a movie called Flora Plum that has been through several movie studios, financial backers and stars. While it looked like it would get going again in 2003 with Ewan McGregor starring instead of Russell Crowe, it's now back "in a holding pattern," she says.