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Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker.[1][2] She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award. For her work as a director, she has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992,[3] and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time.[4] Entertainment Weekly named her 57th on their list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in 1996.[5] In 2016, she was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star located at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.[6]
Foster began her professional career as a child model at age three and made her acting debut in 1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she worked in multiple television series and made her film debut with Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). Following appearances in the musical Tom Sawyer (1973) and Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), her breakthrough came with Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976), in which she played a child prostitute, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her other roles as a teenager include the comedy musical Bugsy Malone (1976) and the thriller The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), and she became a popular teen idol by starring in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and Candleshoe (1977), as well as Carny (1980) and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster struggled to transition into adult roles until she garnered critical acclaim for playing a rape survivor in the legal drama The Accused (1988), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won her second Academy Award three years later for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), in which she portrayed FBI agent Clarice Starling. She made her debut as a film director the same year with Little Man Tate. She founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Its first production was Nell (1994), in which Foster also played the title role, receiving her fourth Academy Award nomination. Her other successful films in the 1990s were the romantic drama Sommersby (1993), western comedy Maverick (1994), science fiction Contact (1997), and period drama Anna and the King (1999).
Foster experienced career setbacks in the early 2000s, including the cancellation of a film project and the closing down of her production company, but she then starred in four commercially successful thrillers: Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), and The Brave One (2007). In the 2010s, Foster shifted her focus to directing, with films like The Beaver (2011) and Money Monster (2016),[7] and episodes for Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. She received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for "Lesbian Request Denied", the third episode of the former. She also starred in the films Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), Hotel Artemis (2018), and The Mauritanian (2021), with the latter winning Foster her third Golden Globe Award.
Foster was born on November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles, the youngest child of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (née Almond; 1928-2019)[8] and Lucius Fisher Foster III, a wealthy businessman.[9] She is of English, German[10] and Irish[11] heritage. On her father's side, she is descended from John Alden, who arrived in North America on the Mayflower in 1620.[9][12]
Her parents' marriage had ended before she was born, and she never established a relationship with her father.[9][13][14] She has three older full siblings: Lucinda (born 1954), Constance (born 1955), and Lucius, nicknamed "Buddy" (born 1957), as well as three half-brothers from her father's earlier marriage.[12]
Following the divorce, Brandy raised the children with her female partner in Los Angeles.[9][15] She worked as a publicist for film producer Arthur P. Jacobs until focusing on managing the acting careers of Buddy and Jodie.[9][12][13] Although Foster was officially named Alicia, her siblings began calling her "Jodie", and the name stuck.[16]
Foster was a gifted child who learned to read at age three.[9][13] She attended the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school.[13] Her fluency in French has enabled her to act in French films and she also dubs herself in French-language versions of most of her English-language films.[9][17] At her graduation in 1980, she delivered the valedictorian address for the school's French division.[13] She then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut[14][18] where she majored in African-American literature, wrote her thesis on Toni Morrison under the guidance of Henry Louis Gates Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985.[9][19][20][21] She returned to Yale in 1993 to address the graduating class and received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1997.[22][23] In 2018, she was awarded the Yale Undergraduate Lifetime Achievement Award.[24]
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