By Jenny Halper in New York City

Jodie Foster, who is arguably the most empathetic woman in Hollywood , plays against type in Spike Lee's “Inside Man.” Her Madeline White, a mysterious mediator in a bank-heist ploy, might just be evil incarnate, nicely dressed and tanned.

The actress and director scored last summer with the box-office smash “Flightplan,” and surprised audiences last spring in the acclaimed French flick “A Very Long Engagement.” Back to work and busier than ever, Foster took time to talk to press about genre flicks, filming in New York , and why she will always play strong women.

Q: Why is Madeline so powerful?

JODIE: Well she's done this before. She's done it a lot of times before. So in her profession, which is as a kind of fixer figure, she's been in these dangerous situations where you have two dead hookers and a mayor, you know? And I think there's something wonderful about how she approaches it with such wit and breeziness. She's someone who doesn't judge people, and at the same time she breaks her own moral law.

Q: How did she get so tough?

JODIE: She's learned the craft of toughness by doing something else. Twenty years ago she may have run the highest prized cat house in England , and she used her favors to figure out a way to get into this business, and yet bring all of the immorality of that other life. And that ultimately she's not the one that's got the problems. They're the ones- this guy's got the Holocaust past, and that one's facing a death sentence. So ultimately her role in it is to touch on each area, but to not necessarily be involved. And that's what makes her so sinister. It is that lack of involvement.

Q: Is the movie saying that women in control are bitches?

JODIE: That is just rude! I love my dog, and that's what she is too! Clearly that's a big stereotype- the character in this movie could easily have been a man. I don't know why, but I like to play parts that could have been a guy or a girl. That's true of “Flightplan” for example, which was written for a man. When you put a different gender in the circumstance, of course it changes everything. And it gives the role a completely different feeling, and a different sense of history. In the same way Denzel's character could just as easily have been a black cop, a white cop, a Latino cop- it didn't make any difference.

Q: Do you consider yourself a feminist, and does that influence the roles you choose?

JODIE: I have no problem calling myself a feminist with a capital F. And yes, I am attracted to strong women, I've played different kinds of strong women, I've played dumb blondes, I've played a straight-laced straight arrows, I've played wild women, yet they're all strong. Sometimes I feel like that's my Achilles heel as an actor; I don't really know how to play a weak character. I think if I played a weak character I don't think you'd believe me. But it's not something we're lacking on screen…

Q: Last year, "Flightplan" was the only female star vehicle that was a success. And this was a crap year for women.

JODIE: I'm really proud of “Flightplan.” “Flightplan” is not a perfect movie, and it's not an art house film, it is a genre movie, and I make no apologies for that. But I really feel like that character was truthfully drawn and I'm really proud as an actor, I killed myself for that movie, and I'm really happy that everybody seemed to go. And it's not an Oscar race movie. I think one of the reasons why I've been lucky enough is that I'm really picky about what I choose. It doesn't mean that the scripts I make are all perfect, it doesn't mean that my movies are great, it just means that I'm very particular about how I choose my films. I don't make three movies a year, I make one maybe sometimes every three years, and that film has to stand for something in my body of work.

Q: So how do you decide?

JODIE: Sometimes that's an instinct. I feel like whatever you have to say about “Flightplan,” in the movie there is this feeling of you walk into this situation and you've lost your child really hits the core of almost every person I know. And that's what you look for in a movie, you look for something that is absolutely completely truthful, true, and universal. So if I find that once every three years, that's enough for me.

Q: Did you get chills shooting near the World Trade Center ?

JODIE: I go there every day when I'm here so…it really has become part of the New York landscape, it's a desperate moment, but also it's a shining moment for New Yorkers. After 9/11 is when I wanted to come here because of how my friends were, and what they were doing here, the beauty of this community and how it's doing better, specifically New York, such an international place with people from such different walks of life, that made me proud, made me want to be here, made we want to be part of it, so in some ways yeah it's that chilling thing, but also it's New York's shining moment

Q: Do you like doing supporting roles?

JODIE: It's a wonderful thing to be in a supporting part, because you don't have to be the head banana, and it's very freeing. And you actually end up getting cast in things you wouldn't normally be cast in. I did a really small part in a French movie “A Very Long Engagement” with Jean Pierre-Jeunet, and it was such a freeing thing, cause no one would have ever hired me for that in the United States . So I hope that I can continue doing foreign parts off and on just for myself. My next movie, “The Brave One,” will be shot in New York . I'm co-starring with Terrence Howard which is thrilling, and it's directed by Neil Jordan.

Q: Is it art house?

JODIE: No, and I have to say, this is my new recipe, this thing that I like doing is taking mainstream movies that I feel have a real heart to them, and having extremely talented directors from different walks of life coming in and approaching them. So, you know, Spike Lee directing a bank heist movie is exciting to me, Neil Jordan who is known for the quirky Irish movie, gender bending Irish movie, to do something with a real mainstream fore…you get the best of both worlds in there.

Q: What kinds of movies are you attracted to as a director?

JODIE: It's a totally different deal, and I'm attracted to completely different movies as a director than I would be as an actor. It's almost surprising to me how different the movies are that I'm directing. My next movie is called “Sugarland,” I am acting in it, and I haven't acted and directed since “Little Man Tate,” so that's a new thing. It's also with Robert De Niro, it's about immigrant Jamaican cane workers in south Florida and their relationship with a big fat-I mean that he's a rich guy- plantation owner.

Q: How was it working with Spike?

JODIE: I love working with Spike and that was the foremost reason why I wanted to make the movie ‘cause I've never been right for any of his films and here was an opportunity to do something that I'd be right for and mostly just to stand behind his shoulder and see how he sees it, you know. I just wanna know how he does it and why he thinks the way he does and why he would set up the shot the way he does and that kind of stuff. For me that's the impulse now to make films as an actress, it's to really watch the directors and see what they're doing, and why they do what they do when they shoot the pictures. I really thought it was going to be a much more manicured experience, a much more technical experience and it wasn't at all. It was a very free form, a very free Spike and I didn't anticipate that at all.

Q: How do you work as a director?

JODIE: Well, I have done personal films, and of course I want to try news things and I'd like to make films that are more visual because I do have, I'm very strong technically and I do know a lot technically, just because I've made so many films. So I actually think I'm evolving a little bit to making films that have a personal flare to them that are about character and yet have a strong technical stamp. I know what I want, so it's easy for me to see one take and without necessarily having to write notes about I can say “I need you to change this for me.” So that by the time all those things are accomplished by the second or third take, then I feel like I got what I wanted and I and I can walk away.

Q: How do you maintain being a private person?

JODIE: I was raised in the industry. I started when I was four years old, so my life has always been important to me and I realized that by the time I was five or six instead of waiting till I was 25. I remember going to Disneyland and saying, “No. If I wanna go to Disneyland I'm not going with a video camera following me. I wanna have the experience and I'm not gonna be made to feel bad and self-conscience and weird because there's this guy following me.” And that was clear to me at a very young age that I had to fight for my life and I had to put my foot down about my life and that if I didn't my life would get gobbled up and taken away from me. Also, I had a different kind of career. I had an actor's career. I never had a celebrity career and no one has ever wanted to rip my clothes off. I just wasn't, you know, Michael Jackson or Madonna. I wasn't really one of the pop icons.

Q: Didn't “Taxi Driver” change that?

JODIE: I don't think so, no. I was nominated for an Oscar for “Taxi Driver” and I went to private school. I wore knee socks and Peter Pan collars and a blazer everyday, and “Taxi Driver” was clearly not me.

Q: What would you do if you weren't doing this?

JODIE: I think we all have questions about who we might have been had we chosen a different profession. I think about that a lot. The problem with any profession you choose to be excellent in is that it takes 100% and it means your hard drive has to be full of the details of what that profession is and by definition it means there's a whole bunch of junk you're not doing. That's why I choose to make fewer films, you know, because if I made three movies a year, I can guarantee you I would have no idea what's going on in the New York Times. I wouldn't have listened to a record for an entire year. I wouldn't have gotten my own coffee for a whole year and I wouldn't have traveled. Your profession does eat up so much of your energy and your time but as an actor you have to be somebody in order to play someone. So you have to be able to have time where you're not an actor or not a celebrity so that you could actually be a person of substance.

“Inside Man” opens on March 24th .