Award-winning actor and filmmaker Jodie Foster is up for an Emmy. Her portrayal of a juvenile prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver earned her her first Oscar nomination when she was just 14 years old. Since then, she has won the Best Actress Oscar twice, for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs.
In addition, the four-time Golden Globe winner acted in the hit films Panic Room and Contact. Foster’s most recent appearances are in the upcoming HBO series True Detective: Night Country and the 2023 biopic Nyad, costarring Annette Bening.
Life as a Child Actor
On November 19, 1962, Alicia Christian Foster—better known by her stage name, “Jodie”—was born in Los Angeles. Jodie is the youngest of four children and the daughter of Lucius Fisher Foster III and Evelyn “Brandy” Ella. At the tender age of three, the future Academy Award winner debuted on screen as the Coppertone Girl in a TV spot for the well-known suntan lotion company.
Foster was an exceptionally intelligent and precocious youngster who started talking at the age of nine months and taught herself to read by the time she was three. She never attended acting classes, but in 1968, she jumped straight into the entertainment industry with Mayberry R.F.D., her first TV series.She went on to have a successful career as a child actor after that, with Brandy by her side to serve as both her manager and mother. “I still treasure her impact. She was very strong, self-educated but wasn’t pushy. She’d stay in the trailer and read magazines while I worked,” Jodie later recalled.
Foster made his big screen debuts in the Disney films One Little Indian (1973) and Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Foster was enrolled in a demanding academic load at the exclusive prep school Lycée Français de Los Angeles, where he was also working toward fluency in French.
Breakthrough with Taxi Driver
Foster’s breakthrough performance was in the 1976 criminal thriller Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese, which was set in the seedy underbelly of New York in the 1970s. Foster, who was cast at the tender age of twelve, as a young prostitute who becomes the fixation of Robert De Niro’s character Travis Bickle.
Both Foster and the film, which was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1994, received widespread acclaim. Renowned movie reviewer Roger Ebert called Foster’s casting for the part “chillingly cast.” Foster received her first Oscar nod for Taxi Driver, but Beatrice Straight for Network ultimately prevailed. Nevertheless, the performance launched her as a teenage star and brought her roles in hit films like Foxes (1980) and Freaky Friday (1976), solidifying her status as one of Hollywood’s next big thing.
Connection to Reagan Assassination Attempt
Even though Foster’s life appeared to be going well, she was uneasy about her rising notoriety. After high school, she attended at Yale University in quest of obscurity and a typical college experience. The young actor didn’t seem to be intimidated by the renowned Ivy League rigor as she enrolled in advanced French classes right away. “I chose Yale basically for writing and literature,” she says. “Of course, you can’t be sure—you get your first D and could decide to be a chemistry major.”
Her hopes of a calm college life, however, were shattered in 1981 when John Hinckley Jr., a disturbed man, made an attempt to kill President Ronald Reagan and claimed to have done it to win Foster over. Hinckley had developed an obsession with the well-known student, contacting her on the phone and penning love notes. Eventually, during Hinckley’s trial, she testified and said that the encounter had left her deeply rattled.
Still, Foster went back to work soon after the incident, costarring with Peter O’Toole in Svengali, using acting as a method to escape the intense and unwelcome attention Hinckley’s actions had brought her.
Oscars for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs
Following his 1985 Yale literature degree, Foster transitioned from child star to adult actor, starring in a string of largely forgettable films until the mid-1980s.
Her next well-received performance was as sexual assault survivor Sarah Tobias in the grim and violent film The Accused (1988). The 26-year-old became one of Hollywood’s most renowned actors for the role after winning the Academy Award for Best Actress and the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Dramatic Motion Picture.
Foster left her mark three years later when she starred as FBI agent Clarice Starling in the highly successful film The Silence of the Lambs, which was based on Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel. In the 1991 film, Anthony Hopkins’s iconic psychopath Hannibal Lecter faces off against Foster’s character.Acclaimed by critics, The Silence of the Lambs took home five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Foster. For the performance, she also won her second Golden Globe.
Due to the film’s success, two television spinoffs, Red Dragon in 2002 and Hannibal in 2001, as well as the 2007 prequel Hannibal Rising, were produced. Foster did not, however, take on the same position. Rather, Juliaanne Moore played Hannibal’s Clarice Starling.
Directing Work
Having solidified his position as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and having the financial and professional flexibility to take a different direction, Foster became a director. Regarding the distinctions between directing and acting, she responded as follows: “Well, you have control, but you also have 175 people involved. Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m always so energized by directing. It’s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It’s a huge passion for me.”
Her directing debut in a feature picture, Little Man Tate (1991), received high praise from critics. Since then, Foster has directed three films: Money Monster (2016), The Beaver (2011), in which she co-starred with Mel Gibson, and Home for the Holidays (1995).
In addition, she has directed episodes of well-known television programs, including Black Mirror, House of Cards, and Orange Is the New Black. Despite being her first television directing role, Orange Is the New Black got her an Emmy nomination in 2014.
More Recent Movies
Foster has continued to appear in popular films including Nell (1994), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), and the box office success Panic Room (2002) in between her sporadic directing endeavors.Her run of critically acclaimed performances continued with Nell, which she co-produced. She costarred with Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson in the primary role of a young woman reared by her mother in total solitude within a cabin. Foster didn’t win an Oscar or a Golden Globe, despite having nominations for both awards.
Foster chooses scripts for indies, foreign films, and blockbusters. She produced and acted as Sister Assumpta, a nun, in the 2002 movie The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. After that, in 2004, she had a brief role in the French film The Very Long Engagement.
Foster made a comeback to high-profile Hollywood films in 2005 with Flightplan and 2006 with Inside Man, although she has since chosen her ventures carefully. In 2011, she collaborated with filmmaker Roman Polanski for the tragic comedy Carnage. In the film, Foster and John C. Reilly portrayed a couple from New York City who get into a fight with Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, another couple. In the science fiction movie Elysium (2013), Foster played a malevolent defense official aboard the space station opposite Matt Damon.
Additionally in 2013, Foster was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award, an honorary Golden Globe given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to an actor for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.”
Foster’s performance in The Mauritian earned her a third Golden Globe in 2021, this time for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. She most recently appeared in the 2023 film Nyad, where she played long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s companion and coach, Bonnie Stoll. Foster received her tenth Golden Globe nomination for the part.
Wife and Children
Actor and photographer Alexandra Hedison wed Foster in a discreet weekend wedding in April 2014. Although Hedison had one appearance in each of the mid-1990s episodes of Melrose Place and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, her most notable part has been on the television series The L Word.
In October 2013, Foster and Hedison, who had previously dated Ellen DeGeneres for four years, started dating. Hedison made an appearance with her spouse over Zoom when Foster accepted her 2021 Golden Globe Award virtually, but otherwise, the couple avoids public appearances together and prefers to keep their personal life private.
During her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award in January 2013, Foster disclosed her sexual orientation for the first time in public. “One of the deepest loves of my life… my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most beloved BFF of 20 years,” she said in her thank you note to Cydney Bernard, her ex-partner.
Foster first got to know Bernard while working on the 1993 movie Sommersby. Foster hasn’t disclosed the father of their two kids, Charles, who was born in 1998, and Kit, who was born in 2001, despite the fact that they were conceived through in vitro fertilization. In her 2013 acceptance speech, Foster remarked, “I am so proud of our modern family.” “Our amazing sons, Charlie and Kit, who are my reason to breathe and to evolve, my blood and soul.”