“I have a lot of scars,” Jodie Foster told Entertainment Weekly in an interview about the time she was attacked by a lion when she was eight or nine years old during the filming of “Napoleon and Samantha” (1972).
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“The lion grabbed me, shook me, moved me horizontally and then let me go. I had two perfect puncture wounds on one side and then two perfect puncture wounds on the other side, on my hip,” Jodie Foster detailed.
She recalls that none of the cameras on set captured the incident. “It happened after the take was already finished. I was in shock, so I don’t remember much.”
In the film, Jodie Foster plays Samantha, the friend of Napoleon (played by Johnny Whitaker). The two embark on a journey with a lion and a rooster.
The actress revealed that the film crew was afraid to help her. “So I saw them running sideways, taking all the equipment with them, like they were running away from me.”
The incident was only brought under control when the animal trainer arrived on set.
“I think the trainer said, ‘Let go,’ and the lion let me go from its mouth,” Jodie Foster said, adding that it was probably the “scariest thing that had ever happened to her.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure if I even had time to feel scared.” She continued working with the same lion that had attacked her.
“And the rooster wasn’t used to working with that particular lion. And I saw the lion turn its head and kind of do this, like it might come toward me or something, and I threw the rooster and ran away,” she added.
Photos: Wikimedia Commons. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
