Jodie Foster recently shared in an interview with "The View," that she kept her Hollywood career a secret from her children when they were young. "I guess I didn’t want them to know me that way," Foster shared. "I wanted them to know me as their mom and the person that went away to work and stuff. But I just didn’t want them to be confused about what I did for a living." Foster shares two sons, Charles "Charlie," 25, and Christopher "Kit," 22, with her former partner Cydney Bernard. Foster and Bernard dated for 15 years before splitting up in 2008. Foster has previously shared that her son Charlie is interested in acting, hoping to follow in her footsteps. "[He'll say] 'I want to be in movies. Why can't you get me a job?' Then I say, 'You have to earn that. If you want to be an actor, you can start by doing a little theater.' Then he says, 'I'm not interested in that. I just want to be famous and see my face.'" she told More Magazine in 2007, per People. However, Foster's youngest son Kit isn't as fond of acting. "I know the perils of having a parent involved in your art form are too great," Foster told The Guardian in July 2018. "My older son is getting more interested in acting now, and I'm glad he discovered it late. My younger son is really shy and I can promise you he will never be an actor."

Foster shared her experience taking Charlie with her to work for the first time.  "I brought him to set one day and I bought him a little plastic tool belt and stuff. And I was like, ‘Yeah, and this is this set and this set and this set.’ And for a really long time, he thought I was a construction worker." Foster, now 61, didn't specify how old her sons were when she finally shared the truth with them, but they have accompanied her at several Hollywood events. Even with their support, Foster says that her son's aren't watching her projects with her. "They have no interest in watching my movies with me. I think they're going to catch ‘True Detective’ ‘cause they’re really into that," she said of her current television series. "There’s a few films that I would never show them because I would be worried about being teased. ‘Nell’ for example, they've never seen, because they do tease me often about that, even though they've never seen the movie."

The actress recently made headlines for her commentary on Gen Z and their work ethic, despite having two sons from that generation. "They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace," she told The Guardian. "They’re like: ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10:30 a.m.’ Or 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?’"