Having hit the big time in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone at the tender age of 14, Jodie Foster admits she saw something of herself in 11-year-old Nim's Island co-star Abigail Breslin.

"She's something," Jodie told Access Hollywood.

"She's a nice kid and she's happy and has great parents and a great support group - and it's fun to watch her going through the same things I went through. The lifestyle is really a great parallel - travelling with your family, this kind of gypsy thing."

However, the double Oscar-winning actress reckons Abigail has the potential to be even better than her.

"In some ways I think she was really born to be an actress in ways that I wasn't," Jodie said.

"She is very much in contact with the dark emotional side, the deep emotional well, and I just really wasn't as a young kid.

"I thought acting was just saying the lines. At 12 and 13 years old, maybe you start changing a little bit but I didn't really start figuring it out until I was in my late 20s."