Oscar-winning actor Jodie Foster has always been an advocate for young talent: She mentors young stars, involves them in high-profile projects, and will lend her name to relatively unknown casts and crews. But even then, she says, Gen Z can be annoying.
The actor, best known for her roles in The Silence of the Lambs and The Accused, has worked with a plethora of emerging actors and crews on the fourth season of True Detective, with 61-year-old Foster telling The Guardian she enjoyed working with the team.
“Well, I’m pretty fun. I mean—I don’t take anything seriously. I make jokes all the time,” she said in an interview released Saturday.
However, despite Foster’s positive reflection about the set of the Iceland-based crime thriller, the mother of two said in her wider acting career young people have proved to be a hindrance.
Mother to two Gen Z sons herself, Foster said people in younger generations are irritating in a professional setting. “They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace,” Foster said.
She explained: “They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 a.m.’”
Foster may have picked up on a wider trend about Gen Z and millennials’ approach to work. A Deloittereport for 2023 looking at the shifting role of work found younger staff wanted to have more control over where and when they work. In fact, 77% of Gen Z currently working hybrid or remotely said they would quit their roles if they were asked to go back to the office full-time.
On top of that, more than three-quarters (81%) of Gen Z said they were interested in working more flexibly or at reduced hours, with pay cuts cited as the most likely reason they wouldn’t be able to make the change.
Not alone
Foster isn’t the only high-profile name to take aim at younger people in the workforce. In November fellow Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg told Gen Z and millennials they need to improve their work ethic if they want to get on the property ladder: “I’m sorry, if you only want to work four hours, it’s going to be harder for you to get a house.”
However Foster was also critical of Gen Z’s attitude at work, saying: “Or, like, in emails, I’ll tell them, ‘This is all grammatically incorrect. Did you not check your spelling?’ And they’re like, ‘Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
Again Foster may be picking up on a wider generational shift being observed by scholars. On Medium, linguistics professor Matthew Veras Barros wrote, “A common misconception about language is the idea that kids, these days, are ruining English or ‘dumbing it down.’”
He added: “Gen Z is indeed changing English, but it is also very much a misconception that this constitutes a degradation or ruination of the language. Throughout history, it has always been the younger generations that drive language change, and then grow old enough to complain about kids in their own time.”
On top of that, Foster might also be witnessing friction with younger peers on account of the medium itself: email.
Gen Z simply doesn’t email said Thierry Delaporte, CEO of IT firm Wipro, at Davos last year: “They’re 25—they don’t care. They don’t go on their emails, they go on Snapchat; they go on all these things.” Instead Delaporte uses Instagram and LinkedIn to speak to staff.
In September last year a study from Barclays also found Gen Z are almost twice as likely (49%) to utilize work instant-messaging platforms as those over 55 (27%), with 97% of respondents between ages 18 and 24 saying they want to show off their personality through office interactions.
‘It’s hard growing up’
Despite the criticisms Foster had of some younger talent, she also heaped praise on nonbinary actor Bella Ramsey. The star of The Last of Us introduced Foster at the Elle magazine Women in Hollywood celebration late last year, at the request of Foster herself.
“I do a lot of reaching out to young actresses. I’m compelled. Because it was hard growing up,” Foster added.
The actor, who had her first on-screen role in a commercial at the age of 3, also acknowledged the freedom younger stars now have compared with the industry when she was coming up.
“We weren’t free,” Foster said. “We didn’t have freedom. And hopefully that’s what the vector of authenticity that’s happening offers—the possibility of real freedom.
“We had other things that were good. And I would say I did the best I could for my generation. I was very busy understanding where I fitted in and where I wanted to be in terms of feminism. But my lens wasn’t wide enough. I lived in an incredibly segregated world.”