During Friday’s (February 16th) episode of The Graham Norton Show, Jodie Foster told a terrifying tale about working with a lion on the set of the 1972 film, Napoleon and Samantha. The Nell actor shared that she was nine years old when one of the three lions on set “picked me up sideways, shook me in his mouth and turned me around.”
Not knowing what was happening, Foster thought there was an earthquake because of all the shaking. “Every single person on the crew was running in the opposite direction and I’m like sideways watching everybody — and they took their equipment, too,” she said. “I’m watching everybody leave going, ‘What’s happening?’ “
“The trainer said, ‘Drop it’ and because the lion was so well-trained, he opened his mouth and dropped me down and I went running,” the Nyad actor explained. Laughing, she added that the lion “came after” her and “put one paw on me and then just waited like ‘I got her.'”