Jodie Foster's 'Flightplan'

Star Discusses New Film, Career And Mommyhood

(CBS)  With almost 40 films and two Academy Awards to her credit, Jodie Foster seems to be one of the most selective actresses in Hollywood, starring in only three films in the past decade.

"For me, it has to be something that matters," she tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler. "Something that really moves me in a very primal place in order to get me to kind of sacrifice my life for that amount of time. And by the way, when I'm not working, boy, time flies."

Foster is back on the big screen in the new psychological thriller "Flightplan," which opens nationwide on Friday, Sept. 23.

Foster stars as Kyle Pratt, a woman who is accompanying her dead husband's body on a trans-Atlantic trip from Berlin to the U.S. She ends up taking a nap, and when she wakes up on this plane, her 6-year-old daughter is missing.

"Nobody believes me" Foster says of her character. "She goes through a very interesting journey in the film. One of the most challenging that I've ever done, from trying to keep it together and trying not to become hysterical, to as time goes by, and she starts fearing for her daughter's safety and what might be happening to her, and sort of leading herself in some ways to a kind of madness."

On a personal note, Foster, who started her career when she was very young and managed by her mother, says if one of her children asked her about wanting to follow her in her footsteps, she would try to change the subject.

"I would say: How about those Mets!" she jokes. "I don't have any burning desire for [one of them] them to become an actor. Mostly because it is a tough life and most actors don't achieve a certain amount of success. I, of course, always wonder who I might have been, had I not been in the film business. If they said this is something we really want to do, I'd say, I'm with you. But I just want to be supportive. I don't want to be a part of your career. I would stay in the background and make sure they had somebody who was a part of their career, who we felt good about, who we trusted."

Even though she has won two Academy Awards and directed several well-recieved films, Foster does not consider herself a success.