Jodie Foster

• 1. Introduction

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  Jodie Foster was a teenager when she acted as a French interpreter at a press conference during the Cannes Film Festival. The film was Taxi Driver, which won the Palme d'Or that year, and the journalists in the room came away impressed. By then Foster had already been working in front of cameras for more than a decade. Her road from a Coppertone commercial to two Academy Awards ran through Disney comedies, a Yale degree, a scandal she did not cause and a long second career behind the camera. How does a child actor survive the move into adult roles? What happens when an obsessed admirer pulls a young actress into a national tragedy? And why did she keep returning to the director's chair?

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• 2. Child of Commercials

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  Alicia Christian Foster was born on the 19th of November 1962 in Los Angeles. She was the youngest child of Evelyn "Brandy" Foster and a businessman named Lucius Fisher Foster III. Her parents' marriage ended before she was born, and she never built a relationship with her father. Her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck, even though she was officially Alicia.

  Brandy raised the children in Los Angeles with her female partner. She had worked as a publicist for the film producer Arthur P. Jacobs. Later she focused on managing the acting careers of her son Buddy and her daughter Jodie.

  A Coppertone television advertisement in 1965 started Foster's career when she was three years old. Her mother had meant only for Buddy, the older brother, to audition. Jodie came along to the casting call, and the casting agents noticed her.

  In 1968 Foster had a minor part in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., where her brother was the star. Over the following years she kept doing advertising work and appeared in over 50 television shows. Among them were Gunsmoke, Bonanza and Kung Fu. During this period she and Buddy became the breadwinners of the family. She also had a recurring role in The Courtship of Eddie's Father between 1969 and 1971, and she voiced Pugsley Addams in the animated Addams Family series.

  Napoleon and Samantha, a Disney film from 1972, was her feature film debut. She played a girl who befriends a boy and his pet lion. On set the lion accidentally grabbed her, which left scars on her back. Foster valued the commercials that came before. She said she had worked for 20 years doing that stuff and felt it was "really invaluable".

  Foster learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency lets her act in French films, and she dubs herself in the French versions of most of her English-language films. In 1980 she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.

  Her mother worried that the work would dry up once Jodie outgrew child roles. She decided that her daughter should also start acting in films for adult audiences.

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• 3. Taxi Driver and 1976

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  Martin Scorsese first gave Foster a supporting part in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in 1974, as a "Ripple-drinking street kid". He then cast her in Taxi Driver as a child prostitute. Before filming, Foster had to undergo a psychiatric assessment, and a social worker accompanied her on set. Her older sister Connie stood in for her in the sexually suggestive scenes.

  Foster later said she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." On set she bonded with co-star Robert De Niro. He saw "serious potential" in her and spent time rehearsing scenes with her.

  Foster called the film a life-changing experience. It was, she said, "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself." She described realizing that acting was not a hobby but a craft. The role earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The American Film Institute and Sight & Sound rank the film among the best in history, and it is preserved in the National Film Registry.

  Bugsy Malone, also from 1976, was a British musical parodying Prohibition-era gangster films with an all-child cast. Foster played a major supporting role as the star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker said she took such an intelligent interest in the filmmaking that she could have taken over as director if he had been run over by a bus. Roger Ebert wrote that she was already getting roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women. Her two BAFTA Awards were given jointly for Bugsy Malone and Taxi Driver.

  The independent drama Echoes of a Summer, filmed two years earlier, also reached screens in 1976. Foster played a terminally ill girl, and Gene Siskel wrote that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress". In The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane she starred opposite Martin Sheen as a mysterious girl living alone in a small town, and she won a Saturn Award. In November she hosted Saturday Night Live and was, at that time, the youngest person to have done so.

  Freaky Friday, a Disney comedy, closed the year as what was described as her first true star vehicle. She played a tomboy who swaps bodies with her mother, and she earned a Golden Globe nomination. She later called it a "transitional period", when she began to grow out of child roles. After nine months in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue in 1977, and a final run of 1977 releases ending with Candleshoe, she made no new releases until 1980, the year she turned 18.

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• 4. The Hinckley Shadow

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  During her freshman year at Yale in 1980-81, Foster was stalked by John Hinckley Jr. He had become obsessed with her after watching Taxi Driver multiple times. Hinckley moved to New Haven and tried to reach her by letter and by telephone.

  On the 30th of March 1981, Hinckley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people. He claimed his motive was to impress Foster. The incident drew intense media attention, and bodyguards accompanied her on campus. Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that she was innocent and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President". Her videotaped testimony was played at Hinckley's trial.

  Hinckley was not her only stalker at Yale. One man planned to kill her but changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.

  Foster has rarely spoken publicly about Hinckley. In 1982 Esquire published her essay "Why Me?", on the condition that there be no cover lines, no publicity and no photos. In 1991 she canceled an interview on NBC's The Today Show when she learned that Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction and the producers refused to change it.

  In a 1999 interview on 60 Minutes II with Charlie Rose, she explained her silence. "I never wanted to be the actress who was remembered for that event. Because it didn't have anything to do with me." She said the incident had a major impact on her career choices.

  She also kept it in proportion. James Brady, Reagan's press secretary, was permanently disabled in the shooting and died of his injuries 33 years later. Foster said that whatever bad moments she had could never compare to what his family endured.

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• 5. Yale and The Accused

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  Foster graduated from Yale magna cum laude in 1985, having majored in African-American literature. Her thesis on Toni Morrison was written under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates Jr. She returned in 1993 to address the graduating class and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997. College changed her view of her profession. She had once thought acting was unintelligent, but she realized there was "nothing stupid about it".

  She kept working on summer vacations. Those films included O'Hara's Wife in 1982, the television film Svengali in 1983, The Hotel New Hampshire in 1984 and Mesmerized in 1986, which she co-produced. None found large audiences or critical appreciation. On the 19th of December 1983, U.S. customs agents detained her at Logan International Airport for possessing a gram of cocaine. She was charged with a misdemeanor and placed on one year's probation.

  After graduation, work dried up. Siesta, her first film after college, was rated a failure in 1987. Five Corners, released the same year, was better received and won her an Independent Spirit Award as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. In 1988 she made her directing debut with the Tales from the Darkside episode "Do Not Open This Box". Stealing Home, that same year, failed critically and commercially, and Roger Ebert wondered if any movie could be that bad.

  The Accused, also from 1988, is based on the real case of Cheryl Araujo. It follows the aftermath of a gang rape and the survivor's fight for justice despite victim blaming. Foster was doubting whether to continue her career and planned to begin graduate studies. She decided to give acting "one last try".

  She had to audition twice. She was cast only after several more established actors turned the part down, since the producers were wary of her earlier failures. They also still remembered her as a "chubby teenager". The shooting of the rape scene took five days, and the filming was hard on the cast and crew. Foster was unhappy with her own performance and feared it would end her career.

  The opposite happened. The film received positive reviews, and her performance won widespread acclaim. It brought her an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a National Board of Review award, plus a BAFTA nomination. Her next release would arrive in February 1991.

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• 6. Silence and Scrutiny

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  Clarice Starling, the FBI trainee in The Silence of the Lambs, is sent to interview the imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. Her task is to help catch another killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb, played by Ted Levine. Foster had read the novel after its publication in 1988 and tried to buy the film rights. She loved that it featured "a real female heroine" and a plot about using your mind rather than brawn.

  Director Jonathan Demme did not initially want her, but the producers overruled him. His view changed during production, and he later credited her with helping him define the character. Released in February 1991, the film grossed close to $273 million and became one of the biggest hits of the year. It won five Academy Awards overall, taking all the main categories, and Foster won Academy, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards. The American Film Institute lists Starling and Lecter in its top ten film heroes and villains.

  Foster declined to return as Starling in Hannibal in 2001. Julianne Moore took the part.

  Some reviewers also attacked the film in 1991. They called it misogynist for its brutal murders of women, and homophobic and transphobic for its portrayal of Buffalo Bill as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism landed on Foster, whom critics claimed was herself a lesbian. Publications such as OutWeek and The Village Voice made that claim while protesting the film.

  In 2007 she publicly acknowledged her 14-year relationship with Cydney Bernard in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter's "Women in Entertainment" breakfast. She had met Bernard, then a production coordinator, on the set of Sommersby in 1993. They were together until 2008 and had two sons, Charles, born in 1998, and Christopher, called Kit, born in 2001. Foster is their biological mother.

  In 2013 she addressed the matter again in her speech accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globe Awards. Many news outlets then described her as gay, though some noted she used neither the word "gay" nor "lesbian". In 2014 she married the actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison after a year of dating.

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• 7. Behind the Camera

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  Little Man Tate, released in October 1991, was Foster's first feature as a director. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures. It follows a child prodigy who struggles with being different, played by newcomer Adam Hann-Byrd, with Foster as his working-class single mother. She wanted a story that was not autobiographical but carried the philosophies she had gathered over 25 years. Some reviewers felt it fell short of expectations. Roger Ebert called it the kind of film you enjoy watching, and it did moderate business.

  In 1992 she founded the production company Egg Pictures as a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. Its first production, Nell, arrived in December 1994 under director Michael Apted. Foster played a woman raised in isolation in the Appalachian Mountains who speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, whose theme of "otherness" attracted her. Reviews were mixed, yet it earned a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

  Home for the Holidays, her second film as director and producer, came out in late 1995. This black comedy about a nightmarish Thanksgiving starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. Critics were divided, and it was a commercial failure. The Baby Dance followed in 1998 as a Showtime television film directed by Jane Anderson. Foster said it was easier to take financial risks in television than in features, and the film earned her an Emmy nomination for producing. That year she also moved Egg Pictures from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures.

  The next decade brought setbacks. Foster was preparing Flora Plum, a story about a 1930s circus starring Claire Danes and Russell Crowe, when Crowe was injured on set and filming could not finish on schedule. The project was shelved, and her later attempts to revive it failed. She also drew controversy by expressing interest in a film about Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi-era film director, who disliked the idea. In 2001 she shut down Egg Pictures, calling producing "just a really thankless, bad job". Its last production, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2002.

  The Beaver, in 2011, was her third feature as director. It starred Mel Gibson as a depressed man who develops an alternate personality through a beaver hand puppet. Foster called it "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career". Controversy around Gibson, who had been accused of domestic violence and of making antisemitic, racist and sexist statements, sank it at the box office. Money Monster, with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, premiered out of competition at Cannes in May 2016 and was a moderate commercial success.

  Television gave her a second directing life. Her Orange Is the New Black episode "Lesbian Request Denied" in 2013 earned an Emmy nomination. Its follow-up "Thirsty Bird" and the House of Cards episode "Chapter 22", both in 2014, brought two Directors Guild of America nominations. She directed the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel" in 2017 and the finale of Tales from the Loop in 2020.

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• 8. Later Roles and Honors

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  Anna and the King, in 1999, paid Foster $15 million to play the teacher Anna Leonowens, making her one of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. Thailand's government judged the film historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family, and it banned distribution there. Reviews were mixed to negative. Earlier she had starred as a SETI scientist in Contact in 1997, which won her a Saturn Award, and in 1998 an asteroid, 17744 Jodiefoster, was named for her.

  Panic Room came to her in 2002 after Nicole Kidman was injured on the set of Moulin Rouge! and dropped out. Director David Fincher gave Foster only a week to prepare for playing a woman hiding from burglars with her daughter. The film grossed over $30 million in its North American opening weekend, her best opening. Flightplan followed in 2005, then Spike Lee's Inside Man in 2006. The Brave One in 2007 saw her play a New Yorker turned vigilante after her fiancé is murdered, which invited comparisons to Taxi Driver and earned her sixth Golden Globe nomination.

  In 2013 she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and in 2016 she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She took fewer acting roles in the 2010s, but Hotel Artemis in 2018 gave her Nurse Jean Thomas, who runs a hospital for criminals, and critics praised her. That year she also co-produced and narrated Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, a documentary about one of the first female film directors.

  The Mauritanian, in 2021, cast her as the lawyer of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, and she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. At the 2021 Cannes Film Festival she received the Honorary Palme d'Or. In Nyad in 2023 she played Bonnie Stoll and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. On the 19th of April 2024 she pressed her hands and feet into wet cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

  That year she starred in True Detective: Night Country, winning a Primetime Emmy Award, and executive produced Alok, a short film directed by her wife Alexandra Hedison. Across her career she has won two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. Her 2025 film Vie privée, known in English as A Private Life, was her first French-speaking lead role, and critics acclaimed it.

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