Ever since she was a child and broke into fame with the first big name among Jodie Foster's movies, the Martin Scorsese classic "Taxi Driver," the actress has been considered one of the biggest role models in the industry, later taking on the challenge of becoming a director - and now she's spoken out about the need for women to be more involved in this role.

The film industry would be a very different scenario without Jodie Foster's movies in the last few decades. Known mostly for her incredible acting chops (which have earned her two Oscars as Best Actress in the past, one for "The Accused" and the other for her iconic role as Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs"), the talented Yale graduate can tell the world a thing or two about how things are managed in Hollywood.

According to Upi, Jodie Foster's movies were honored last Thursday, as the actress and director received the Laura Ziskin Liftetime Achievement Award at the Athena Film Festival, a five year-old festival that celebrates women in the industry, as well as their leadership in the different branches of moviemaking.

This is at least the second major Lifetime Achievement award the 52 year-old star has received, after she got the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the 2013 Golden Globes.

In any case, as The Inquisitr reports, Jodie Foster's movies and her career received this top honor from the Athena Film Festival, and she took her time to speak about what it meant to be a woman making films in Hollywood, in an industry that has seen women being mostly actresses or make-up artists.

"When I was growing up in the film business, I never saw a woman's face," said Foster, according to WebProNews. "Sometimes it would be a lady who played my mom. Occasionally, it would be a makeup artist, but most often it would really just be me and the script supervisor. Little by little, as time went on, a few female faces came onto crews, and it changed everything ...Men [were my] fathers and brothers, little by little, women came into their world and suddenly the family was a more realistic family."

Given the fact that Jodie Foster's movies span about four decades, she's definitely got a thing or two to say on the subject!