During a recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show, the actress, 61, revealed to the titular host and his other celebrity guests, which included Olivia Colman, that she experienced the terrifying moment while on the of the 1972 film Napoleon and Samantha.
In the film, Foster was 9 years old when she starred alongside a young Michael Douglas and Johnny Whitaker. She and Whitaker played kids who go on a journey with their pet lion rather than saying goodbye to it.
Foster recalled three lions being on set: the main lion, a stunt lion and a stand-in lion, the latter of which was the one she had the incident with.
“We finished a take and I was going up the hill and all I remember is I remember seeing his mane come around and then he picked me up sideways, shook me in his mouth and turned me around,” Foster said.
“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.”
The Silence of the Lambs star retold the event with amusement in her voice, but other guests on stage — Colman, comedian Wanda Sykes, and Scottish host Lorraine Kelly — looked on in shock.
“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,” she said.
But the lion “came after” Foster, she said, noting he “put one paw on me and then just waited like ‘I got her,’ ” she said with a laugh.
