LOS ANGELES — An early scene in “Hotel Artemis” features the face of the woman known to most as The Nurse. It’s a face etched with deep furrows of despair, loss, frustration and pain. Time has been so brutal to this face that for a few moments it’s impossible to recognize Jodie Foster.

The actor/director transformed herself to look like the kind of disgraced health care provider who would be running a medical treatment facility for thugs and gangsters on the floor of a downtown Los Angeles hotel in the year 2028. Her night is about to get busy because the city streets outside the Hotel Artemis are the location for the most violent riot in the city’s history. Plus, she must tend to a man shot during a failed bank robbery.

Even with two Oscars to her credit, getting the world-weary look she wanted for the role wasn’t easy for Foster. Her idea was to play The Nurse as a little gray-haired lady who was feisty in running her facility. The Nurse also suffers from panic attacks aggravated by an overwhelming grief and hasn’t been outside in years.

“I really wanted to make a physical transformation, and this would be a different character than you would normally see me,” Foster says. “I thought that was important, but I had to fight for that a lot during the production. It was not as popular as you might think.”

Foster understood the concerns because the first time The Nurse appears, the image is jarring. That was what she wanted: the audience to pick up early on the tough life the character has lived. She finds the stark look to be “a beautiful thing” as it shows how the way a person has lived can be seen on their face and in their body movement.

In a touch of irony, Foster has arrived at the interview on a pair of crutches connected to how she’s lived her life. She recently had surgery to fix an old skiing accident injury.

“Hotel Artemis” is the first time Foster has stepped in front of the camera since appearing in 2013’s “Elysium,” and only her sixth film role in a decade. Foster has found more pleasure in working behind the camera, directing such productions as “The Beaver” and “Money Monster.”

She’s not turned her back on acting, but the role has to be interesting enough for her to be willing to say yes.

“I was directing a lot and had made the decision I wanted to focus on that as my full-time job,” Foster says. “If something came along that was great, then I would do it. I think that is how it’s going to work now for acting. There’s something great about how, after giving 52 years as an actor, to be able to say I just want to do it if I love it.

“It’s nice to have that pressure off. I think it’s good because any time I am in a movie as an actor, there will be something really unusual and there’s a reason to go.”

It helps that the 55-year-old Los Angeles native began her career at the age of 3, appearing as the Coppertone Girl in a TV commercial. She was a cast regular on “Mayberry RFD,” “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” “My Three Sons” and “Paper Moon.”

Foster’s leap into films came when she was 8, starring in “Napoleon and Samantha.” Since then she has appeared in more than 40 feature films, with her work in “The Silence of the Lambs” and “The Accused” earning her Oscars.

“Hotel Artemis” director/writer Drew Pearce is beyond excited Foster found his project to be interesting enough to get her into acting mode. He’s still amazed – and a little baffled – how Foster got wind of the project and reached out to him about being in the movie. She had managed to see a copy of the script before it had officially left Pearce’s office.

Once he had Foster in the film, the casting of the other roles with Sterling K. Brown, Dave Bautista, Charlie Day, Sofia Boutella and Brian Tyree Henry was easy.

What got Foster’s attention with “Hotel Artemis” was it felt different.

“It is so original. I feel hungry for original content. I feel like feature films now are just the rehashing of television shows and are the same old thing over and over again,” Foster says. “There is something very fresh about this nostalgia for Los Angeles and this retro world that meets this sci-fi, dystopian action film.”

Her association with the project coupled with her years of working in Hollywood has put Foster in the situation where she’s being asked about the lack of women behind the camera and about all the sexual abuse allegations that have been brought to light by a growing number of actors. Foster recalls how there have been concerns about the lack of women directors for years, but she has seen some positive movement in recent years along those lines.

As for the sexual abuse accusations that surface almost daily, Foster recognizes this is a very important and transitional time in Hollywood, but she prefers not to participate in what she calls “the sound bite part” of what’s happening. She has found that the nonstop snippets of comments that fill the airwaves tend to trivialize the issues.

Foster takes a broader view of recent events and stresses it is important to examine why this happened and come up with a way to heal and change.