Jodie Foster hits out at lack of work for female directors

She arrives for our interview, smiling but clutching her shawl. She can't understand the British concept of summer she tells me, gazing out of the window at the grey skies and trees bending in the wind.

Jodie Foster is slight, and of course very intelligent.

So when she announces that cable TV is now where it's at for someone interested in a variety of thought provoking filmmaking, greater diversity and risk taking - you have to listen.

After half a century as an actress and director, winning Oscars and huge acclaim in both, Foster seems to have reached something of a crossroads.

She has a new film out, her first thriller as director, called Money Monster, with an A-list cast of George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

It's themes are a corrupt financial industry, an unethical media industry hooked on 24-hour action, and the demands of a technological world.

But it's the goings on in her own industry that she has latterly been talking about - in particular Hollywood's woeful representation of women behind the camera.

The studios are hooked on superhero films that guarantee massive box office she says, and that means fewer interesting voices and subjects.

And studio bosses who seem scared to take a chance on a woman doing the job of director or producer.

She points instead to the freedom of cable TV and streaming services, which she says offer much more scope for individual voices on stories with an interesting narrative.

Foster has directed on House of Cards Netflix' hit series and Orange Is the New Black and says she is looking for more projects.

Why don't you ask to do a super hero film, I ask her - well if I did she replies my superhero would be worried about his parents and a mid life crisis!

So if it seems that Money Monster signals a change in the industry, it seems we're speaking too soon.

Yes it's a big studio Summer blockbuster, with a female director. But this won't open the floodgates just yet.