When Jodie Foster was eight or nine years old, she was attacked by a lion while filming the Disney movie Napoleon and Samantha in 1972. The lion picked her up, shook her from side to side, and then dropped her, leaving two perfect holes in each side of her hip. She still has a lot of scars from the attack, which happened between takes and wasn’t caught on camera.
In a recent interview with W Magazine, Foster talked about how she saw the lion’s mane coming toward her before it grabbed her. She said the crew ran away while she was still in shock. The animal trainer yelled “Drop it,” and the lion let her go. She says this was the scariest thing that has ever happened to her, even though she didn’t have time to be scared during the attack. Foster said she had worked with lions on set before, but this one was suddenly aggressive.
After getting better in the hospital, Foster went back to work with the same lion, but this time he was holding a rooster that scared the animal. When she saw the lion turn toward her, she threw the rooster and ran away, thinking it was scarier than the first maul. This strength shows how tough she was in early Hollywood, when she had to deal with wild animals on set in the 1970s.
