Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. Foster started her career as a child actor before establishing herself as a leading actress in film. As a performer, she is known for her versatility. She has received several accolades, including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the Honorary Palme d'Or.
Foster began her career as a child model and gained recognition as a teen idol through Disney films, including Napoleon and Samantha (1972) and Freaky Friday (1976). She appeared in Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a 12-year-old prostitute in his Taxi Driver (1976).
Other early films include Tom Sawyer (1973) and Bugsy Malone (1976). After attending Yale University, Foster transitioned into mature leading roles and won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for playing a rape victim in The Accused (1988) and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She has also been nominated for Nell (1994) and Nyad (2023). On television, Foster starred in the HBO anthology series True Detective: Night Country (2024), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.
Foster has directed four feature length films: Little Man Tate (1991), Home for the Holidays (1995), The Beaver (2011), and Money Monster (2016). She founded a production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Foster also received Primetime Emmy nominations for producing The Baby Dance (1998) and for directing the Orange Is the New Black episode "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013). She has also directed episodes of Tales from the Darkside (1988), House of Cards (2014), the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel" (2017), and Tales from the Loop (2020).
Early life and education Alicia Christian Foster was born on November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles, California, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond; 1928–2019) and Lucius Fisher Foster III (1922–2016), a businessman. She is of German, Irish, and English heritage. On her father's side, she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Her parents' marriage ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father."Jodie Foster, Reluctant Star." 60 Minutes II. 1999. Retrieved April 24, 2007. She has three older full siblings: Lucinda, Constance "Connie", and Lucius "Buddy"; as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage. Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her female partner in Los Angeles. She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie. Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three. She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school. Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films. She also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films.Rebichon, Michel (October 3, 2007),"Jodie Foster: Hollywood fait confiance à mes choix", L'Express. . At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.
She subsequently studied at Yale University, where she majored in African-American literature. She wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997.Yale Bulletin and Calendar Commencement 1997 June 2–23, 1997 Volume 25, Number 33 News Stories In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Career
Career beginnings
Foster's career began with an appearance in a Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her mother had intended only for Jodie's older brother Buddy to audition, but had taken Jodie with them to the casting call, where she was noticed by the casting agents. The television spot led to more advertising work and in 1968 to a minor appearance in the sitcom Mayberry R.F.D., in which her brother starred. In the following years, Foster continued working in advertising and appeared in over 50 television shows, including Gunsmoke, The Doris Day Show, My Three Sons, Bonanza, and Kung Fu; she and her brother became the breadwinners of the family during this time. She had recurring roles in The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969–1971) and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1973), voiced Pugsley Addams in The Addams Family animated series (1973–1975), and starred opposite Christopher Connelly in the short-lived Paper Moon (1974), adapted from the hit film.
Foster also appeared in films, mostly for Disney. After a role in the television film Menace on the Mountain (1970), she made her feature film debut in Napoleon and Samantha (1972), playing a girl who befriends a boy, played by Johnny Whitaker, and his pet lion. She was accidentally grabbed by the lion on set, which left her with scars on her back. Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".
Foster said she loved acting as a child and values her early work for the experience it gave her: "Some people get quick breaks and declare, 'I'll never do commercials! That's so lowbrow!' I want to tell them, 'Well, I'm real glad you've got a pretty face, because I worked for 20 years doing that stuff and I feel it's really invaluable; it really taught me a lot.'"
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister Connie acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that 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." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time to rehearsing scenes with her.
Foster called Taxi Driver a life-changing experience and said it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft." Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where Foster impressed journalists when she acted as a French interpreter at the press conference. Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award. The film is considered one of the best in history by the American Film Institute and Sight & Sound, and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.
Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976, Bugsy Malone, a British musical that parodied films about Prohibition Era gangsters by having all roles played by children. Foster appeared in a major supporting role as a star of a speakeasy show. Director Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writing: "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore". Variety called her "outstanding", and Vincent Canby of The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone.
Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years earlier. The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune wrote that she "is not a good child actress; she's just a good actress", although both reviewers panned the film. Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects of thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until Drew Barrymore hosted at age 7 in 1982. Her final film of the year was the Disney comedy Freaky Friday, "her first true star vehicle". She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later said the film marked a "transitional period" when she began to grow out of child roles. It received mainly positive reviews, and was a box-office success, gaining Foster a Golden Globe nomination for her performance.
As Foster grew, her mother wanted photos to reflect Foster's ability to take on adult roles, so she arranged for Emilio Lari to do a partially nude photoshoot. The photoshoot was taken at a rented estate in Los Angeles, with Foster's mother and Lari's wife on set. Estimates of the year of the photoshoot range between 1975 and 1979, when Foster was between 13 and 16. After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. Her other films released in 1977 were the Italian comedy Casotto and the Disney heist film Candleshoe, which was filmed in England and co-starred David Niven and Helen Hayes. After its release, Foster did not appear in any new releases until 1980, the year she turned 18.
1980s: Transition to adult roles and The Accused
In 1980, she gained positive notices for her performances in the independent films Foxes and Carny (1980), before becoming a full-time student at Yale in 1981. Stated by Foster in this interview. She later said that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession. She realized that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it."
Although Foster prioritized college during these years, she continued making films on her summer vacations. These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), the television film Svengali (1983), the John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), The Blood of Others (1984), and the period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced. None of them gained large audiences or critical appreciation.
After graduating from Yale in 1985, Foster struggled to find further acting work. In 1987, her first film after college, the neo-noir Siesta (1987), was rated a failure, but her next project, the independent film Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her.