For their latest roles, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster transformed their bodies, and our minds.
: nature and age. It is no spoiler to say that Annette Bening and Jodie Foster achieve a conquest over those opponents, not in some trite, scripted or airbrushed way, but with the sinews and cartilage of real athletes. Every now and then a cultural moment comes along that exposes how severely and artificially we continue to limit the conceptual range of female ideals, and the cannonball biceps of these two actresses in their 60s constitutes a significant one.
Chin, a fabled extreme athlete himself who has scaled peaks, skied Mount Everest and grew up swimming competitively, had not known until that moment how committed Bening was in preparing for the role. “We weren’t sure how far she was willing to take it,” he says. They left Bening alone during preproduction “to respect the actor’s process.” Bening used the time to train every day for a year under the tutelage of a former U.S. Olympian, Rada Owen.
Bening, 65, and Foster, 60, have been unable to promote the film because of the screen actors strike. But it’s plain in conversation with their filmmakers and trainers that both women explicitly wanted to shatter age archetypes — really, really break them all to pieces. “It was important to both actors that we not touch their bodies, as in touch up,” Vasarhelyi said. “They were committed to play women of their age.
Bening added enough inches to her shoulders that she told Stoll, “My jackets fit differently.” She also became a dedicated swimmer who still spends an hour or so a day in the pool. When “Nyad” began to screen at film festivals, Vasarhelyi got a text from a friend’s mother. “Did you airbrush Annette’s legs?” it said. “No, that’s God’s work,” Vasarhelyi replied. But it was also Bening’s.Foster’s first appearance on the set came with a similar jolt of awe for the directors.
It is arguably the most limber acting job of Foster’s career. She exudes a jubilant physicality, and the audience will be pardoned for a doing a doubletake when she appears on a boat deck wearing cargo shorts and a sports bra, and grabbing for their phones to look up Foster’s age. She will turn 61 on Nov. 19. Recently, the directors met her at a social occasion. “I’m being objectified,” she teased them.
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