I start to mention the most famous story about Ben Foster, and Ben Foster starts to roll his eyes. It’s an anecdote that crops up in nearly every interview with the American actor, one that dates back to the 2013 war drama Lone Survivor. On set one day, in a quest for earthy verisimilitude, Foster began eating handfuls of dirt. “It wasn’t handfuls”, he later claimed, explaining that he had simply balked at the idea of navy seals displaying pearly-white “Hollywood teeth”.
There are other similarly regurgitated stories of Foster’s Method-acting bent: the time he took performance-enhancing drugs before playing Lance Armstrong, or when he deformed his own tooth with a power drill before playing a hillbilly bank robber in Hell or High Water (2016). (Here with me today, Foster’s teeth appear back in Hollywood fettle.) When these stories are strung together, I say to him, doesn’t it make your work sound a bit, well, preposterous?
“It’s a very good word… preposterous,” Foster drawls. “You're a full grown adult wearing other people's clothes saying other words that you wouldn't necessarily say in scenarios you wouldn't believe. As a career choice, that could be considered preposterous. I have no problem laughing at that.”
He smiles. Then gets serious. “It's also as ancient a profession as there is in any community – a storyteller. Be it here, or in a dark cave with a flickering fire against a wall painting. It's ancient.” For journalists, he says, “there’s a draw to either leading on, ‘That person just wants the money and the fame’, or ‘That person’s out of their mind, and what they’re doing is preposterous.’ And I don’t think it’s really so binary.”
Foster, 45, sits across from me in a cushty London hotel room, having flown in for the festival premiere of his new film, Christy. Today, the burning intensity that he so often brings to the screen has been swapped out for an eco-friendly LED. He is amiable and sincere, and there is a calm, slow roughness to his voice, like a wheelbarrow over wet gravel.
Christy tells the story of Christy Salters, the women’s boxing champion who nearly lost her life at the hands of Jim Martin, her abusive husband-manager. Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney is the eponymous fighter, while Foster plays Jim – paunchy, balding, and uncharismatic. We watch Christy’s scrappy rise to the apex of women’s boxing, all the while living as a closeted lesbian in a toxic, controlling marriage that culminates in a murder attempt.
But the abuse she was subjected to wasn’t all physical. “Coercive control was a term I was not familiar with,” says Foster. “It’s not illegal in the States as it is in the UK. So I studied it, and talked to some people who were friends with Christy at the time. Anybody who’s exerting that kind of control – there’s not a manual for it. But it is systematic, and it seems to come intuitively to people.”
In the past, Foster has revelled in playing villains – a violent outlaw in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma; a malicious NBA executive feuding with Adam Sandler in Hustle (2020); a slave hunter on the pursuit of Will Smith in 2022’s Emancipation. But Christy features one of his most disconcerting turns – a performance of evil at its most banal and unshowy.
It must be hard to locate the humanity in a character like that, I suggest. “There's no getting around what he ultimately did to her,” says Foster. “But as a storyteller, you're not playing the whole story in every scene. Anybody who’s trying to steer their [partner’s] sexuality, their finances, their privacy, has to be coming from a place of profound insecurity in his own right. To me, it felt important to at least understand for myself that it came from a place of tremendous fragility.”
He is full of praise for his co-star, who also produced the movie. “Sydney is her own force,” he says, fondly. “She came in extremely prepared, knew the crew’s names, was always ready to work. I’d be knackered at the end of the day, and she’d go train for another three hours to fight the next morning.”
Over the past few years, the 28-year-old actor has become a fixture of newspaper headlines, the fulcrum of a neverending cycle of discourse – about her body; her acting; her politics; her advertisement for denim jeans that may or may not have contained a white supremacist dogwhistle. Sweeney, says Foster, “is in a zeitgeist worldview that is… unique. And I think she’s handling it incredibly well. She’s a powerhouse.
‘“I'm not on any social media at all,” he adds. “And have never been. I think [my representatives] know me better than to push me into that. But she plays in that field. It’s so important to this generation, to the future. I find her incredibly impressive.”
Christy Martin – the real Christy Martin – broke all kinds of boundaries in the sport, with her identity, and survived the impossible
Christy might be a particularly grim character, but Foster seems to have a penchant for heavy material – his finest role may well be in the wrenching 2018 drama Leave No Trace, playing a single father and war veteran struggling with PTSD. Things weren’t always so downbeat: born in Boston to countercultural Jewish parents, Foster got his start on the Disney Channel, starring for two years as the lead of the tween series Flash Forward. He had a lead role opposite Kirsten Dunst in the superlative teen romcom Get Over It (2001), appeared twice in Freaks and Geeks – the Judd Apatow-created high school series that germinated a handful of future A-listers – and had a memorable recurring role on HBO’s funereal TV classic Six Feet Under, from 2003 to 2005.
Six Feet Under would end up being Foster’s last steady television role. “I’m not against TV,” he insists. “When I was coming up, there was a very big distinction between film and television. Other people thrive in the hope of having something more consistent. I become very obsessive on a subject and want to go as far as I can – and then take a beat and look for another job.”
Foster has also, by and large, steered clear of the world of blockbusters – despite a brief sojourn into superheroism with X-Men: The Last Stand. He played the mutant Angel in the film, which was critically panned and reportedly beset with behind-the-scenes conflicts. “I don’t really have much of a relationship with [that film] right now,” says Foster.
He does, however, recall a stunt sequence involving a steep fall from a tall building. “I am not a huge fan of heights,” he explains, “and doing a 180-foot drop in Vancouver, without a shirt, with just a wire on my back, scared me to death. But I was grateful to do that stunt.” Despite the panning, the third X-Men film does have its advocates. “I think the film means something to different people,” Foster says. “When people come up to me and talk about it, it seems to carry a meaning for them. Usually it’s a good meaning.”
Christy, too, is sure to carry a good meaning for some people: though the film has underperformed at the US box office, it’s a moving, well-made biopic with strong performances, telling a story that deserves to be told. “Christy Martin – the real Christy Martin – broke all kinds of boundaries in the sport, with her identity, and survived the impossible,” says Foster, earnestly. “Ultimately I find it a very inspiring story. So it’s nice to be talking about it that way.”
He leans back. “And it’s really nice not waking up and going to work considering Jim every day. I’ve shook him.” As best as I can tell, he really has.
‘Christy’ is released in cinemas from 28 Nov
