Actress Jodie Foster said she sometimes finds Gen Z "very annoying" but hopes to help budding stars find their own way to help them "learn to relax".
In an interview with the Guardian, Foster admitted that she had a hard time understanding the work attitudes she encountered.
"They're really annoying, especially in the workplace," Foster joked. "They're like, 'No, I don't feel like working today, I'll come at 10.30.' Or I'll email them and say, 'This is all grammatically incorrect, didn't you check your spelling?' And they say, "Why should I do that, isn't that limiting?"
Perhaps the actress has earned the right to say things as she sees them. By the time she was nominated for an Oscar at the age of 14 for her role as a victim of child sexual abuse in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver, she had made more films than the director.
Having made films for more than five decades, it was important to her to help young actresses navigate the often difficult waters she had already navigated.
Asked what she thinks young people in the industry need to hear, Foster said: "They need to learn how to relax, how to not think about it so much, how to come up with something that's their own. I can help them find which is much more fun than being, with all the pressure behind you, the protagonist of the story."
In the interview, she revealed that she made a special effort to connect with Bella Ramsay, the 20-year-old non-binary actress who starred in The Last of Us and played the young noblewoman Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones.
At Foster's request, the two met at Elle magazine's Women in Hollywood celebration in November. "I turned to Bella, because we'd never met, and said, 'I want you to introduce me to this thing,' which is a wonderful event for actors and people in the cinema, but it's also very fashionable."
Foster said the event's organizers were "very proud of themselves because they brought every ethnicity together, and I'm like, yeah, but everyone's still wearing heels and eyelashes."
She said Ramsay is a good example of an actress emerging in a new "vector of authenticity."
"Bella, who gave the best speech, was dressed in the most perfect suit, beautifully tailored, mid-cut and no make-up," says Foster.
She revealed how she challenged widespread gender stereotypes in her own family. Speaking about raising her children, who she has with ex-partner Sydney Bernard and now raises with wife Alexandra Hedison, she said: "There was a moment with my older son when he was in high school when, because he was brought up of two women, he seemed to be trying to figure out what it was like to be a boy.
"He was watching TV and he came to the conclusion, 'Oh, I've just got to be an ass,'" Foster said.
"No. This is not being a man! This is what our culture has been selling you all this time," the actress concluded./BGNES
