Jodie Foster explains how she landed a blockbuster role intended for Sean Penn

Wesley StenzelFri, June 26, 2026 at 7:01 PM UTC

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Jodie Foster; Sean PennCredit: Getty; WireImageKey points -

Jodie Foster recently recalled that Sean Penn was the original choice for the lead role in the 2005 film Flightplan.

The actress said she had the idea to convert the protagonist into a woman: "I think it would be a better movie."

Foster expressed dissatisfaction with the film's screenplay but added, "I feel proud of my part."

Jodie Foster wasn't the type of actor originally envisioned to play the lead in one of her biggest movies.

The two-time Oscar winner discussed her 2005 thriller Flightplan during a recent interview with The i Paper, in which she explained that the filmmakers behind the movie began with a very different idea for its protagonist.

"You know, it was written for a man," Foster said of the film's main character, aircraft engineer Kyle Pratt. "Sean Penn was going to play it, and for whatever reason he didn't end up doing it."

Foster said it was her idea to convert the lead character into a female role. "I got a hold of the script and I said, 'Well you could make it a woman and I think it would be a better movie, because it'll talk about female hysteria,'" she recalled, noting that the uncertain paranoia of the character wouldn't feel realistic if a man played the role. "No guy is confused about whether he's imagined something or not. Like, that's not gonna happen."

Jodie Foster in 'Flightplan'Credit: Touchstone Pictures

However, screenwriter Billy Ray previously claimed that the film's producer, Brian Grazer, was the one primarily responsible for changing the gender of the lead character.

"When I started it was a male character, and they had been talking to Sean Penn, who I think would have been sensational. But it was Brian Grazer who had the idea of let's make it a woman and to make it Jodie," Ray told CHUD in 2005. "The first draft that Jodie read, the character was a male. But she had enough insight to see how it would play with a woman and she signed on to that script and I started writing for her."

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Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Foster, Grazer, and Ray for comment.

Flightplan follows Kyle as she loses her young daughter on a transatlantic flight while accompanying her recently deceased husband's casket from Berlin to the United States.

In the i Paper interview, Foster indicated that she wasn't happy with the film's screenplay, but she focused on maximizing the quality of her particular role. "We got close enough to shooting where they were like, 'Look, are you in or you out? Because we're not going to change. The script is going forward,'" she remembered. "And I said, 'Well, you know what? I'm just going to get my part right.' And I feel proud of my part. I feel proud of the arc of a woman who isn't believed."

Jodie Foster at the 2026 Tribeca Film FestivalCredit: Dominik Bindl/Getty

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Foster still finds resonance in moment at the end of the film, after Kyle recovers her daughter, who seemingly has no awareness of the harrowing journey that her mother has just endured to find her. "The daughter wakes up and she says, 'Are we there yet?'" Foster recalled. "And I was just like, this is the story of every woman's life. I dealt with the bad guy. I got hit in the face. And then the kid wakes up and says, 'Hey, are we there yet?'"

Flightplan wasn't popular with critics — it currently holds a 36 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 53/100 rating on Metacritic. Despite the tepid reviews, however, the film became a massive hit, grossing more than $223 million at the worldwide box office, which made it one of the biggest financial successes of Foster's career.

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