Directing a new Black Mirror film gives Jodie Foster the chance to look back at her own upbringing. The Hollywood titan talks to Tim Adams

Last week Charlie Brooker was recalling for me the moment he learned Jodie Foster would direct an episode of Black Mirror, his inspired series of one-off dramas about the ways our gadgets are colonising the idea of “human”. Brooker had written a script for the new series in which a neurotic single mother uses technology to spy on her young daughter and keep her safe from the world. The Netflix people suggested they tried the script out on the two-time Oscar-winning actor.

Brooker has had considerable global success with Black Mirror but still, the thought of working with Foster, “an actual icon”, made him come over, he says, “all British and starstruck”. He turned to his co-showrunner for the series, Annabel Jones. “We were like: ‘You’re kidding, right? You are going to try Jodie bloody Foster? Yeah right, of course you are.’”

One of the most photographed British women of the 1980s talks about feminism, her abusive father and how she battled her fears to come out as gay

In a small, unloved hotel, the receptionist greets me and Samantha Fox with pursed lips: “There will be no interview here,” she says. I feel as if I’ve wandered into the pages of Fox’s new autobiography, Forever, which is littered with bizarre anecdotes of best-laid plans going awry. From her ill-fated presenting partnership with a spaced-out Mick Fleetwood at the 1989 Brit awards, to a secret naked horseback photo shoot in Antigua – during which her steed galloped off with her to a busy tourist beach – not much has gone as expected in Fox’s life. Not least the day she worked with her childhood idol David Cassidy, who died earlier this month, which she says culminated in being sexually assaulted by him. Despite these, and many other setbacks, she says she is a “lucky girl”.

Fox was just 16 when her mother entered her for the Sunday People’s Face and Shape of 1983 competition – her wholesome, girl-next-door image made her the most popular Page 3 girl ever, and one of the most photographed women of the 1980s, alongside Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. By 21, she had made her first pop record and retired from modelling, going on to break the US and sell 30m records worldwide.

The actor, 47, on being an optimist, avoiding marriage advice and why other people make him anxious

I have so many bad habits it’s impossible to measure the worst. My son would say I don’t take enough care with how I dress, my daughter might say I work too much, and my wife that I can’t seem to help in the kitchen at all. But in my opinion I have none.

As a former kid actor, I know how hard it is to turn that attention into anything but self-destruction. The heat of the spotlight makes ordinary temperatures real cold.

The hit of fresh air in your nostrils? The beauty of the countryside? Hiking is amazing

What is it? Just a nice long walk.

How much does it cost? Probably an initial outlay of about £50 for some decent gear, and then free for ever.

If I was ever going to ‘come out’, I should have done it when I was younger

If anyone ever offers me a cigarette, I always reply: “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” But I’m lying.

I started smoking at 16. I thought it made me look grown-up, but I was shy so I’d do it on my own. I would go into the woods near my home, or occasionally “bravely” have one in the house if nobody was else in.

‘I take comfort in the knowledge that, even though you are not here, your work continues to make children happy’

I was so worried about handing my little boy over during his first week of school, but you made it easier. You smiled at him like a mother would at her own child. You radiated warmth and your hugs were always on offer.

After a day in class with you, C would come home singing. Whenever I hear Do Your Ears Hang Low or see him stretching to the sky when singing about the days of the week, I will think of you. I didn’t tell you at the time, but I loved your morning song so much that I implemented it in my own class (I’m a teacher too). The first time we sang it after losing you was hard but, as time passes, I take comfort in the knowledge that, even though you are not here, your work continues to make children happy.

The future royal wore a trouser suit for her first official evening engagement with Prince Harry, ushering in a new kind of sartorial diplomacy

Last night, for her first official evening engagement with Prince Harry, Meghan Markle wore an Alexander McQueen trouser suit. It was slim-fitting, with cropped cigarette trousers, worn with very high stiletto heels and a cream dishabille blouse. The outfit was many things: very Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking, a bit Princess Diana, with a soupçon of Marlene Dietrich, even a hint of Carine Roitfeld (although Roitfeld probably wouldn’t have worn a blouse underneath the tux). What it was not was a Sandringham-appropriate boxy Catherine Walker skirt suit. It was notable because it didn’t feel like standard royal family dressing at all.

The royal family wrote the rule book on sartorial diplomacy. Usually, their approach is unambiguous. It is a gown embroidered with 2,091 shamrocks in Ireland; a Chanel tweed coat in Paris in the middle of Brexit; a dress by Polish designer Gosia Baczyńska at a garden party in Warsaw. It is the opposite of wearing a cult band T-shirt that only fellow devotees will recognise. The clothes are designed to speak of decency and propriety; the visual messages are clear enough to charm heads of state and reach the rest of us in the cheap seats as well.

Her voice swings between self-consciously raspy and whisper-soft, with a hint of something not quite of this realm

I’ve just realised that I’ve already bought more music this year than I did in all of 2016. It’s not that I have suddenly developed an appreciation of previously unexplored genres (on the contrary, I have become even more entrenched in loving what I already do) but there has been a lot of excellent music in 2017.

And as we ease into the second half of the year, there’s no one I’m listening to as much as American singer-songwriter SZA. I am playing her morning, noon and night; in the shower, all day at work, even as I brush my teeth.

It started as a photo-sharing platform, but quickly rose to become the most influential app of our generation. Now, a forensic new book reveals the struggles and eccentricities of the men behind Instagram

One day in the autumn of 2015, a small but significant change was implemented at the Instagram offices in Menlo Park, California. Employees arrived at work to discover the rubbish bins under each desk had disappeared. The bins had allowed people to work efficiently – no one had to stand up to throw away a coconut water carton or wasabi pea wrapper after they’d enjoyed the company’s free food. But the bins weren’t really Instagram’s – they were installed by Facebook, which had purchased the photo-sharing app for $1bn in 2012.

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, didn’t like the bins. He didn’t like the cardboard boxes employees used to file papers and paraphernalia. He hated old, sagging birthday balloons. Instagram’s offices, he explained, after removing the bins, should represent its ethos. They should be beautiful, simple, pristine – much like the app itself.

Coronavirus crisis has forced musicians and others to adapt, says founder of platform

Musicians, artists and writers have turned to crowdfunding sites to make up for lost opportunities in lockdown, and their audiences have followed them, leading to a rise in contributions through platforms such as Patreon.

Since mid-March more than 70,000 extra creators have joined Patreon, which allows fans to give monthly payments to artists in exchange for exclusive content or simply out of a desire to support someone whose work they appreciate.

Tinned food is an invaluable back-up, and can be transformed into a nutritious meal at the drop of a hat

Tinned food has a best-before date of about three years, but is still likely to be good to eat decades later, making it an invaluable back-up. It also helps you prevent food waste by letting you be more sparing with perishable purchases – though, as with fresh food, it’s a good idea to rotate the cans in your cupboard, bringing short-date items to the fore, so you can build them into the week’s meals.

As well as helping to reduce food waste, tinned food is a good choice compared with other packaged food, because cans are made from a relatively low-impact material that actually gets recycled, unlike most plastics and Tetrapak. It’s also worth noting that, no matter how new it is, if a tin has a dent or is rusty, it is safest to compost the contents to avoid the deadly bacteria Clostridium botulinum.

No longer able to walk hundreds of miles to create his hand-drawn maps, the Beijing-based artist Fuller is charting his thoughts – and the global crisis – while stuck indoors

I’m interested in the psychology of a place and how it makes you feel. So I don’t really see myself as a map-maker – even though I draw maps. It’s about the process of travelling through a place to capture a sense of it. First, I walk for hundreds of miles and make all sorts of notes, and then take thousands of photos to use as triggers for my memory.

I walked more than 840 miles around Beijing when researching the map that became part of my Purposeful Wandering series. I circumnavigated the city and then walked around each ring road. Beijing (where I’ve lived for three years) is built on a Central Axis, and the map is, too. A lot of the drawing is literal, but I also built in personal experiences, references, visual puns and semiotics.

We’re interacting less with the outside world – and the societal pressures that come with it. Are some women still wearing makeup every day?

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The shutdown feels like a good opportunity to examine an age-old feminist question: when women put makeup on, can they ever truly be doing it for themselves?

We will probably never have an answer. The pressure imposed on women to look good is such a part of our existence that we might never get rid of it – even “dressing up for oneself” can be traced back to self-hatred fueled by a beauty-obsessed culture.

The actor on walking the red carpet while having an allergic reaction, her controversial Calvin Klein campaign and dressing like Michael Jackson

I’m not known for wearing outfits that are as completely covered up as this. Often, you are uncomfortable on the red carpet, worried that something is going to pop out, unzip or break. There was something about this look that felt like protection and armour to me. I wore it to the 2018 CFDA fashion awards and I loved how extreme it felt: chic and strong, slightly androgynous but with a femininity to it. It came together nicely with no stress – until I was in the car, when I realised I was having some kind of allergic reaction to my makeup! One of my eyes swelled up right before I was stepping out on to the red carpet. I panicked and put on my reading glasses to camouflage the fact that one eye was almost completely shut!

As a teenager, my relationship with apparel was fraught because I never cultivated my own style. My mom and I bought everything from thrift shops – I would wear the same jeans all year and then cut them into shorts – but every time I would go on a set I would be decked out in designer clothes. There was a disconnect: clothes were just something belonging to other people that I would embody, and then shed.

If Sally Rooney is the first great millennial novelist, then Marianne Sheridan is the first great millennial TV style icon

Would it make a person really shallow if their favourite thing about the TV adaptation of Normal People was Marianne’s wardrobe? Asking for a friend.

With her clashing animal prints and penchant for comfort over taste, the drama’s new character is the perfect lockdown fashion icon

When Sam Perry was pulling together costumes for season three of Killing Eve last year, she wasn’t to know that, come April, tens of millions of us would have watched a show called Tiger King about the big cats and bigger characters of the US’s exotic wildlife scene. But, even before Villanelle returned to our screens last month, many of us were seeing spots thanks to the gun-toting and sometime libertarian candidate for governor of Oklahoma, Joe Exotic.

Yet Dasha, a new character to Killing Eve in season three who occupies a senior role within The Twelve, is the Tiger King-adjacent dresser whose wardrobe feels particularly of the moment.

What’s hot and what’s not in fashion this week

Kaia As in Gerber, who joins the likes of Alexa and Jane Birkin – she now has a bag named after her, by Saint Laurent. Style icon status: confirmed.

The latest trends may not matter any more, but there is a whole new set of influences on what we wear

I know, I know – there are more important things to think about than clothes at the moment. I get that. On the other hand, I don’t see that me squinting at graphs or scrolling through headlines is going to make a vaccine come any quicker. So thinking about clothes is no less constructive than pondering logarithmic scales or contact tracing approaches, really.

I have pretty much checked out of fashion, in the sense of trends, during the period universally known as This Difficult Time. For those of us fortunate enough not to be at the sharp end of the crisis, lockdown is a little like living in a freeze-frame, and the “spring trends” that were scheduled to be happening in our wardrobes now – Bermuda shorts, crochet dresses, waistcoats – feel like outfits for a party that got cancelled. Fashion in the this-week’s-must-have sense feels like a radio station that’s still broadcasting, but with no one tuning in.

From Matilda the Hun to the first fleet, test your knowledge with the Weekend quiz

1 Which South American was the world’s first female president?
2 What was the destination of the First Fleet?
3 Who lived at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque?
4 Which epic poem is based on the Battle of Roncevaux?
5 What animal is a sarcastic fringehead?
6 What German car was last made in Mexico in 2019?
7 Pollex is the medical name for what part of the body?
8 Thomas Neuwirth won Eurovision under what stage persona?
What links:
9 Norwich; Newlyn; St Ives; Camden Town; Bloomsbury?
10 Platypus and four species of echidna?
11 Renren; QQ; Sina Weibo; WeChat?
12 Sydenstricker; Stearns; Staples; Surajprasad?
13 Colonel Ninotchka; Mt Fiji; Zelda the Brain; Matilda the Hun?
14 Harmost; satrap; voivode; bey; subahdar?
15 Ridley Scott; James Cameron; David Fincher; Jean-Pierre Jeunet?

In today’s film news roundup, romantic comedy “Tell Me I Love You” finds a home; the Canadian government gives COVID-19 relief funding to the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada; and the cancelled Sun Valley Film Festival gives out awards. ACQUISITION Vision Films has acquired Los Angeles romantic comedy film “Tell Me I Love You,” […]

In the last 10 years, there’s been an ever-widening niche of documentaries about Stanley Kubrick. Every one of them has been fascinating, one or two (like “Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes”) are as idiosyncratic as the director himself, and the most artful and memorable — “Filmworker” (2017), a portrait of Kubrick’s monkishly devoted gofer and right-hand assistant, […]

Andre Harrell, a veteran music executive best known as the founder of Uptown Records, where Sean “Puffy” Combs got his start in the business, who later went on to head Motown Records, has died. He was 59. The cause of death is as yet unclear. DJ D-Nice revealed the sad news while spinning on Instagram […]

Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, a large media and entertainment law firm, appears to have been the victim of a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of an enormous batch of private information on dozens of celebrities, according to a data security researcher. The trove of data allegedly stolen from the New York-based firm by […]

How long will work-from-home last? Most Google and Facebook employees likely will not be going back to the office full time until 2021. The tech industry’s two biggest internet companies have told employees to settle into home-office routines through the end of the year amid the COVID-19 crisis. Both Google and Facebook this week said […]

Linda Yaccarino, the hard-charging ad-sales chief of NBCUniversal. will soon be running into uncharted territory. In recent years, Yaccarino has railed against Nielsen and taken a public swipe at Facebook. She has urged advertisers to consider running fewer commercials on NBC and to  work to make the ones that remain more ambitious and interesting. On […]

Many people will get coronavirus at some point during this pandemic and in the majority of cases will be able to manage the illness themselves. Emma Hammett, a nurse and founder of First Aid for Life, offers some advice on how to look after people who have mild or moderate symptoms at home.

If you're looking after loved ones whose  symptoms are severe or getting worse, you should seek medical help immediately – particularly if they are in a vulnerable group

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Women tell of ‘bereavement’ because they will be too old for fertility treatment when the coronavirus shutdown ends

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Thousands of couples may have missed their last chance of conceiving via IVF as fertility clinics shut their doors to patients on Wednesday. Some women who are only just young enough to be eligible for treatment will be too old in a few months’ time.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates Britain’s fertility industry, has ordered private and NHS clinics to stop treating patients who are in the middle of an IVF cycle by 15 April. All new treatments have already been banned, a decision which is likely to prevent the births of at least 20,000 desperately wanted babies if it remains in place for 12 months.

Campaigners welcome move to criminalise those carrying out FGM, but warn it will take time to eradicate practice entirely

Sudan looks set to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), in a significant move welcomed by campaigners.

Anyone found carrying out FGM will face up to three years in prison, according to a document seen by the Guardian.

From Berlin to Bogotá there are new footpaths and bike lanes – but not in London

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A growing number of cities around the world are temporarily reallocating road space from cars to people on foot and on cycles to keep key workers moving and residents in coronavirus lockdown healthy and active while socially distancing.

Limited urban park space and leisure trails are under increasing pressure, with many closed to prevent the spread of coronavirus, further limiting urban dwellers’ access to outdoor space. While traffic has dropped around the world, and with it nitrogen dioxide levels, there are widespread concerns over a rise in speeding drivers endangering those walking and cycling.

Australia’s peak representative body for cyclists has called on governments to transform roads into cycleways to ease traffic on bike paths

Australian bike retailers are struggling to keep up with the boom in sales since coronavirus restrictions came into force last month.

“We’re the new toilet paper and everyone wants a piece,” Grant Kaplan, manager of Giant Sydney, a bike store in Sydney’s CBD, tells Guardian Australia.

The WHO recommends cycling to achieve the minimum daily requirement for exercise while physical distancing. Pedalling photographer Martin Godwin looks at cycling during the lockdown

As lockdown eases, travelling by bike will be a safe, healthy and potentially addictive option

There are many reasons you might want to think about cycling for commuting or other transport when the coronavirus lockdown starts to ease, particularly if you live in a city.

With physical distancing remaining in place for some time to come, capacity on public transport will be limited. If more people drive it will create gridlock.

With so much time on our hands, it’s easy to dwell on loss, says Mariella Frostrup. Try distracting yourself with online dates, box sets and classic novels

The dilemma Several months ago my partner of five years left me very suddenly. He’d gone abroad to work, but as far as I knew everything was fine. I even had flights booked to go and visit. The break-up was a huge shock that left me in a low place. After a few weeks I felt I was beginning to come out of the fog and start moving on with my life, going out and seeing friends, going to classes, etc, but then the lockdown was imposed. Being shut away in my flat all day, alone with my thoughts, I seem to be going backwards.

I’m very aware that we are in the middle of a global crisis and it’s awful for everyone. Luckily, I’m in a good position regarding pay and I’m not paying rent, so I really don’t have any reason to complain. However, all I can think about is my ex. It’s driving me a little bit mad. Do you have any advice on dealing with non-Covid-related troubles during this crisis? Talking to others about it is hard, and I don’t want to make it all about myself.

I am not that kind of person and have made it clear I don’t want to hear from him. What more can I do?

Before the lockdown, I had a boyfriend with whom I had been for 16 months. He said he wanted to experiment sexually with another couple, which I found shocking. I am not that kind of person, so I broke up with him. Despite the breakup, he is still constantly texting me, even though I stopped texting him a while back and made it clear I don’t want to see him. The situation hurts me so much, and any help you could offer would be much appreciated.

Joining another couple for erotic fun is not uncommon; many people enjoy it. In fact, there are many communities of people who regularly participate in this sexual style. But it is not for everyone, and jealousies and insecurities can arise no matter how sexually open a person is. “Swinging” is advanced sexual play that requires a couple to be well bonded and requires each partner to be psychologically stable as well as sexually mature.

When life is necessarily small, the more negative feelings we’ve managed to keep in abeyance can loom large, says Annalisa Barbieri

I had adjusted to living alone after I was widowed six years ago, and since the lockdown friends have telephoned frequently and I chat to neighbours at a distance.

Although I feel I am one of the lucky ones and should be fine, I miss, above all, hugs and physical closeness. I have also started to resent people with partners, children or cuddly pets (which I have not done before).

We can expect psychological difficulties to follow as we come out of lockdown. But we have an opportunity to remake our relationship with our bodies, and the social body we belong to. By Susie Orbach

When lockdown started, I was confused by bodies on television. Why weren’t they socially distancing? Didn’t they know not to be so close? The injunction to be separate was unfamiliar and irregular, and for me, self-isolating alone, following this government directive was peculiar. It made watching dramas and programmes produced under normal filming conditions feel jarring.

Seven weeks in, the disjuncture has passed. I, like all of us, am accommodating to multiple corporeal realities: bodies alone, bodies distant, bodies in the park to be avoided, bodies of disobedient youths hanging out in groups, bodies in lines outside shops, bodies and voices flattened on screens and above all, bodies of dead health workers and carers. Black bodies, brown bodies. Working-class bodies. Bodies not normally praised, now being celebrated.

‘I’ve heard of women rejecting a guy for his size, then making fun of him to others’

I was 15 when I realised my penis was below average in size. Feeling increasingly ashamed, I gravitated towards humiliation pornography (in which women demean men over their size) and that only made me focus more on my anxieties. I used to upload pictures of my penis anonymously on to sites such as Reddit, and the comments were all about how small it was.

I’m 22 now, and have never had a girlfriend, which I attribute to my low self-esteem. I think that in a loving relationship you accept each other’s faults – that is what I’d try to do – but I’ve heard stories of women rejecting a guy for his size and then making fun of him to other people. I’ve asked out a female friend or two while drunk, but always been rejected. Hell, I’d have rejected myself – I have overeating issues, an introverted personality, no banter. There are a million factors, but I can’t help tying them all up with having a small penis. I used to blame my inability to date on anyone but me, and for a while I gravitated towards incel [involuntary celibate] groups, but I soon realised that their ideology is toxic. I don’t believe women owe men sex.

Ask yourself Carl Jung’s question: what did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes?

I hesitate to suggest what anyone else ought to be doing to stay on an even keel, psychologically, in these frightening times – partly because I don’t always manage it myself, but also because any such advice tends to turn into yet another item for the to-do list. You’ve noticed, for example, how quickly all those online yoga classes and Zoom cocktail gatherings, intended to add some lightness to lockdown, began to feel vaguely like a chore. (You’re not imagining “Zoom fatigue”: experts say video conversations really are more tiring.) Likewise, “self-care” practices easily turn into new duties, so people end up forcing themselves to be kind to themselves, which doesn’t make much sense.

This is why what I think we probably ought to be doing, to whatever extent possible, is having more fun. Not meditation or gratitude journalling or jogging (unless you find those fun). Not things you think are supposed to be fun. I mean the things you actually find fun. This distinction matters, partly for the aforementioned reason that self-care, however important, isn’t synonymous with fun. But it’s also because in the modern attention economy, all sorts of things – celebrity memoirs, bad new TV dramas, expensive consumer goods – want you to believe they’re the funnest thing you could be doing. Conceivably, for any given person, they might be. But true fun – “deep fun”, as the fun scholar Bernie De Koven called it – is a subtle and personal thing, and not necessarily in anyone else’s commercial interests.

Related: No spare time in lockdown? That's not such a bad thing

After months of wrangling following the Russia probe, prosecutors will not go ahead with the case against Michael Flynn based on the former national security adviser's false statements to the FBI.

Gov. Tim Walz is hesitant to reopen businesses until his state's daily testing rate dramatically increases. "You can't flip it like a switch and say you're open if you don't have testing," he says.

U.S. employers shed a record number of jobs in April, as the unemployment rate climbed to the highest since the Great Depression. The coronavirus crisis has locked down much of the economy.

Fate and politics have rewarded decisions made by the former national security adviser and his legal team, ultimately delivering him from legal jeopardy after a years-long odyssey.

A trio of Senate Democrats wants to give $2,000 per month to individuals through the end of the health emergency. One Senate Republican suggests covering payroll for companies that rehire workers.

The case is the second confirmed by the White House this week. President Trump said Miller hasn't come into contact with him but has "spent some time" with the vice president.

Rick Bright, a top scientist working on a vaccine, says he was reassigned for not focusing on treatments favored by President Trump, even though they lacked "scientific merit."

Gov. Tom Wolf hopes a New Deal-inspired plan will help get the state's more than 1.7 million unemployed residents working again.

The Census Bureau says it plans to continue its relaunch of limited 2020 census operations on May 13, when the next round of workers is set to resume hand-delivering paper forms in rural communities.

From a mysterious toilet flush to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking from the hospital, here are the highlights — including audio clips — from a historic week for the high court.

President Trump wants businesses to start reopening after the coronavirus forced shutdowns. Here's what the White House task force recommends for states.

NPR's Ron Elving talks about the historic U.S. unemployment rate, and the Justice Department's move to drop its criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.