Jodie Foster Biography

Exceptionally mature, talented child actor of the 1970s who made the transition to adult stardom. Initially managed by her divorced mother Brandy, the young Foster was the family’s principal breadwinner. She gradually took control of her own career, meticulously shaping her development through a careful selection of projects and expert tailoring of her public image. Her rise from child star to Oscar-winning actor to feature film director appears unprecedented and her added status as a producer has made her one of Hollywood’s exceedingly few female talents to achieve on such a high level in so many areas.

Foster began in commercials, most notably baring her buns at age three in a classic ad for Coppertone sun tanning products. She appeared as a regular and in guest shots in series TV and made several features for Disney before leaving an indelible impression with her controversial performance in “Taxi Driver” (1976), as the teenage prostitute who inspires Robert De Niro’s deranged personal crusade. Foster followed that Oscar-nominated performance with appearances in several features including the uneven gangster musical spoof “Bugsy Malone” (1976) playing Miss Tallulah, a bawdy speakeasy queen; “The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane” (1977) in the title role of a young murderer; and “Carny” (1980) as a teen runaway who joins up with a couple of carnival hustlers.

Even with her burgeoning career, Foster remained an excellent student, graduating from the Los Angeles Lycee Francais in 1980 as class valedictorian and going on to study literature at Yale. She survived a spate of unwanted publicity surrounding John Hinckley, Jr.’s assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981, which he claimed was done to impress Foster. While studying at Yale, she squeezed in appearances in films and TV, most notably as a member of an unconventional family in the film “The Hotel New Hampshire” (1984), that provided a bridge to impressive adult acting in films like the moody and potent “Five Corners” (1987).

Foster finally consolidated her reputation with Oscar-winning portrayals of a rape victim in “The Accused” (1988) and a rookie FBI agent in Jonathan Demme’s psychological thriller, “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). For her directorial debut “Little Man Tate” (1991), Foster chose a subject close to home–a child prodigy who is caught in a tug-of-war between his working-class mother (played by Foster) and his teacher (Dianne Wiest).

In 1992, Foster formed a three-year production deal with Polygram Filmed Entertainment, in which they were committed to financing three films (under her Egg Pictures banner) in the $25 million range and three in the $10 to $15 million, plus an extra $10 million in print and promotion. One proviso was that Foster could choose whether to act in, direct or simply produce these films, gaining rare control and flexibility for an actor and a woman in Hollywood.

Foster’s acting work during this time was generally in lighter fare—a turn as a prostitute in Woody Allen’s “Shadows and Fog” (1992), starring roles in the costume drama “Sommersby” (1992) opposite Richard Gere and opposite Mel Gibson in the Western spoof “Maverick” (1994), her first comedy in over a decade. In her first Egg Pictures effort, Foster turned in a luminous performance in “Nell” (1994) as a backwoods hermit who speaks in an invented tongue. Once again Foster walked away with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Foster’s second directorial effort (in which she did not appear) was the ensemble comedy “Home for the Holidays” (1995) about a recently fired woman who returns to her childhood home to celebrate Thanksgiving with her eccentric family. The film received mixed critical reviews, but Foster’s sure handling of the actors (including Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr.) was cited. She returned to acting to tackle the role of a scientist who receives signals that may be from space aliens in “Contact” (1997), a high-minded, reality-rooted sci-fi tale conceived by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis, and one which benefited greatly from Foster’s ability to project intelligence on the big screen. Next was an unconventional choice: “Anna and the King” (1999), a non-musical version of the same true life story that inspired the fabled stage and film production “The King and I.” The film cast Foster as widowed British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens, who engages in a romance with the King of Siam (Chow Yun-Fat) in the 1860s. Well acted and lavishly produced, the film nevertheless did not prove to be a particular triumph for Foster. She next appeared in a supporting role as the universally despised Catholic school instructor Sister Assumpta in the clever indie “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys” (2002).

Foster continued to pick her projects judiciously, turning out only a small number of films in the early 2000s (in between, the actress labored to launch her third directorial project, “Flora Plum,” but the film was derailed by various factors, including an arm injury to actor Russell Crowe, who was to play a circus aerialist). In “Panic Room” (2002) she teamed with stylish director David Fincher for a taught, claustrophobic tale of a woman and her young daughter who hole up in their home’s high tech panic room during an apparent home invasion. Fincher’s cinematic razzle-dazzle and Foster’s always believable version of an “action heroine” combined to make for a well-crafted, entertaining thriller. Interestingly, her next project had similar thematic tones and an equally contained environment: “Flightplan” (2005) again cast Foster as an aeronautics engineer and a fiercely protective mother, this time of a six-year-old daughter who vanishes during an airplane flight. When Foster desperately tries to find her child, the airline crew insists the girl was apparently never one of the passengers. Although the film flies intensely over-the-top, Foster’s compelling performance grounded it in enough reality to make it a satisfying film.

Foster next starred in Spike Lee’s impressive genre piece, “Inside Man” (2006), playing a well-connected fixer for the rich and powerful called in to keep quiet the secrets of a bank founder (Christopher Plummer) while his employees are held hostage by a master thief (Clive Owen) who’s constantly one step ahead of a smooth-talking hostage negotiator (Denzel Washington) in an effort to pull off the perfect heist. She was next set to film “Brave One” (lensed 2006), a revenge thriller about a woman who struggles to recover from a brutal attack and sets out on a dark journey to seek justice. Meanwhile, Foster was gearing up to direct her third feature, “Sugar Kings,” a courtroom drama that follows a South Florida attorney’s crusade against a sugar-manufacturing business and its exploitation of thousands of Jamaican workers.

• Also Credited As:
  Alicia Christian Foster
• Born:
  on 11/19/1962 in Los Angeles, California
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Director, Producer

Family

• Brother: Buddy Foster. older; born c. 1958; wrote biography of sister
• Father: Lucius Foster. left family when Foster’s mother was a few months pregnant with her
• Mother: Evelyn Foster. Foster’s manager; divorced when Foster was a few months old
• Sister: Constance Foster. older; born c. 1956
• Sister: Lucinda Foster. older; born c. 1954
• Son: Charles Foster. born on July 20, 1998 in Los Angeles
• Son: Kit Foster. born on September 29, 2001 in Los Angeles

Education

• Lycee Francais, Los Angeles, California, 1980
• Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, literature, BA, 1985

Milestones

• 1965 Began reading at age three
• 1966 Professional acting debut in a Coppertone suntan oil commercial
• 1969 Appeared as a recurring character, Joey Kelley, on the ABC sitcom, “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”
• 1969 Made TV acting debut on the sitcom, “Mayberry R.F.D.”
• 1972 Feature film acting debut, “Napoleon and Samantha”
• 1976 Played breakthrough role in Martin Scorsese’s film, “Taxi Driver”
• 1980 Worked as summer intern for Esquire magazine
• 1986 Co-produced first feature, “Mesmerized”
• 1988 Oscar winning role as rape victim, Sarah Tobias in “The Accused”
• 1991 Made feature directorial debut, “Little Man Tate”, in which she also starred
• 1992 Earned second Oscar for her performance as agent Clarice Starling, opposite Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs”
• 1992 Formed a three-year production deal under her Egg Pictures with Polygram Filmed Entertainment; under terms of deal, Foster gained the power to greenlight her own projects
• 1994 Produced and starred in first production under Egg Pictures banner, “Nell”
• 1998 Debut as TV producer, “The Baby Dance”, a telefilm based on Jane Anderson’s stage play; production earned an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Made for Television Movie
• 1999 Cast as Anna Leonowens, the 19th Century woman who traveled to Siam to serve as governess to the monarch’s children in “Anna and the King”; material had already been filmed in 1946 as “Anna and the King of Siam” and served as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The King & I”
• 2000 Turned down opportunity to reprise role of Clarice Starling in “Hannibal”, the proposed sequel film to “The Silence of the Lambs”
• 2001 In November, closed Egg Productions
• 2002 Portrayed a woman terrorized by burglars in the thriller “Panic Room”, directed by David Fincher; replaced an injured Nicole Kidman in the leading role
• 2002 Produced and co-starred as a one-legged religious in “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys”; film originally announced to premiere at Sundance in 2001 but pulled at the last minute, reportedly because it wasn’t finished; premeried at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival
• 2005 Starred in “Flight Plan,” a thriller produced by Brian Grazer
• 2006 Co-starred with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen in the Spike Lee directed hostage drama “Inside Man”
• Set to direct “Sugar Kings” based on an article in Vanity Fair titled “In the Kingdom of Big Sugar” by Marie Brenner (lensed 2005)