WASHINGTON – Dressed for an interview in shiny black trousers and a crisp oxford shirt, Jodie Foster fixes a guest with that famously level, blue-eyed gaze and prepares herself to address what she has come to call “the Mel Factor.”

“Mel,” for anyone too distracted by the latest news about Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan to remember, is Mel Gibson, who stars in “The Beaver,” a new movie in which Foster appears and which marks her third foray as a director.

The quirky, semi-comic but mostly sad drama, about a man in the throes of crippling depression who seeks to heal himself by channeling the persona of a beaver hand puppet, would be a tough sell at any time.

Throw in the fact that, just as Foster was finishing the picture, a series of profane, verbally abusive arguments Gibson had with his girlfriend surfaced on the Web – ultimately leading Gibson to plead no contest to battery charges in March – and you’ve got the Mel Factor, a controversy that led even the cast of “The Hangover Part II” to demand he be dropped from that movie.

It also has demanded that Foster defend her star, whom she befriended 18 years ago when they co-starred in “Maverick.” Foster readily admits: “He’s a complicated person. But the man that I know is a great friend and incredibly good in the movie.”

The script, by first-time writer Kyle Killen, had been floating around Hollywood for years as a promising property that had yet to be picked up – no doubt because of the tonal challenges presented by a movie that asks viewers to root for a troubled, withdrawn protagonist, identify emotionally with an inanimate puppet who sounds like Michael Caine and cheer at an ending that can’t remotely be described as happy, at least in the traditional sense.

“The Beaver” is “a very specialized movie, and I knew that when I read the script,” Foster says. “Instead of going against that and saying, ‘I’m going to try to make this the most generically general-public style film that I can’ and play up the comedy elements, I did exactly the opposite.

“I knew that this was a film that was going to require a lot of an audience, and it was going to require them to put aside the conventions of what they expect from film.”

In perhaps her boldest directorial move, Foster cast Gibson as Walter Black, a toy manufacturing executive who, as the movie opens, is in the process of alienating his wife (Foster) and two sons (Anton Yelchin and Riley Thomas Stewart).

When Foster approached Gibson for the role, he’d already had run-ins with tabloid culture when anti-Semitic and sexist rants went public.

At one point in “The Beaver,” Black goes on the talk-show circuit with his puppet, defending his bizarre behavior in ways that, although far more benign, oddly mirror Gibson’s own travails with the press and the vagaries of public opinion.

“Sure, the baggage is interesting in terms of the character,” Foster says, adding that Gibson has “lived a very complicated life, and he’s a fascinating man. And with that comes a lot of other things.

“I’m not defending his behavior,” she continues. “He’s the only person who could defend his behavior. But the man that I know is the most beloved actor that I’ve ever worked with, and a man that I’ve known for a long time, over 15 years. And he’s loyal and kind and sweet and generous and always on time and professional.”

Against the grain

Foster’s adamant support of Gibson has proved confounding and even hurtful to fans who find it difficult to accept that the actress who helped raise public consciousness about rape in “The Accused” (for which she won her first Oscar) would associate with a man who faces troubling questions over whether he physically abused his girlfriend.

Then again, Foster always seems to be disappointing at least one of the myriad constituencies who seek to claim her as their own icon, whether they be feminists, the gay community or gun control advocates who might have reasonably expected her to rally to their case after John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in her name in 1981.

Instead of coming to Washington to testify before Congress like so many of her peers, or organizing trips to geopolitical hot spots to leverage her celebrity, Foster has resolutely played it, if not safe, then entirely privately.

(The mother of two young sons, Foster has never spoken publicly about her romantic life.)

Producer Lynda Obst, who worked with Foster on the science-based drama “Contact,” sees a connection between Foster’s refusal to hew to activist expectations and her going to bat for Gibson.

“Integrity is an incredibly important thing to Jodie,” Obst observes. “Actors sometimes try to buy their integrity through causes or donations or affiliating themselves with humanitarian ventures. Jodie’s integrity is in her work. And she’s not one for political correctness over who she knows her incredibly long-standing friend to be.”

That fierce independent streak was nurtured early in Foster’s life by her mother, Brandy, who, when Foster was a toddler, began taking her to casting calls. Even then, Foster recalls, her mother encouraged her to think bigger than the job at hand.

“She wasn’t interested in me being the cutest child or on the cover of a lot of magazines. She was interested in me being taken seriously. Because she wanted to be taken seriously, and she didn’t have the opportunities I had.”

Whenever a script came over the transom, Foster adds, “she still went through the process of talking about the character and asking, ‘Why would you choose this?’ and ‘What does this mean?’ ... Those discussions we had made me feel that I was doing something important, and if I wasn’t doing something important, I had to make it important.”

The result has been a career of remarkable resilience and range, especially for an actress who has had to navigate the inhospitable terrain north of 30 (Foster is 48).

Changing course

Foster recently announced that she’ll focus less on acting than directing, yet another canny move in an industry where 50-year-old women are more likely to get rewarding work behind the camera than in front of it.

And the films she directs are more likely to reveal her core being than any role.

Consider: Whether it’s the child prodigy in “Little Man Tate,” the prodigal young adult in “Home for the Holidays” or Walter Black trying desperately to rejoin his family in “The Beaver,” Foster has devoted her career to balancing the isolation of stardom and a deeper longing for connection.

“I don’t care if I make three movies in my whole life, if they’re three movies that really stand for me in all aspects and that are really about who I am.

“I say this to my kids all the time: If you have the luxury of having an education and being able to choose what you do in life and have a career, it does stand for you. And you better be able to defend your choices.”

Even when those choices occasionally involve the Mel Factor.