Alicia Christian Foster (born November 19, 1962), better known as Jodie Foster, is an American actor, film director and producer.
Foster began acting in commercials at 3 years old, and her first significant role came in the 1975 film Taxi Driver as the preteen prostitute, Iris, for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1989 for playing a rape survivor in The Accused. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs as Clarice Starling, a gifted FBI trainee, assisting in a hunt for a serial killer. This performance received international acclaim and her second Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her fourth Academy Award nomination for playing a backwoods hermit in Nell (1994). Other popular films include Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Brave One (2007) and Nim's Island (2008).
Jodie Foster appears on the set of Taxi Driver in "The Best Christmas Story Never". When Stan has to take over filming Taxi Driver, he criticizes De Niro's acting because he tries to keep John Hinckley Jr. infatuated with her so he will try to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. De Niro walks off the set, leaving John Wayne to take the role of Travis Bickle.
The opening scene of "You Debt Your Life" with Roger drunk and dancing in a bar is a reference to Jodie's 1988 film The Accused. His outfit copies that of her character of Sarah Tobias.
The title of "The Unbrave One" is a parody of Jodie's film The Brave One.
1990s: Box-office success, directorial debut and Egg Pictures[]
Foster's first film release after the success of The Accused was the thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She portrayed FBI trainee Clarice Starling, who is sent to interview incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to hunt another serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb (Ted Levine). Foster later named the role one of her favorites. She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights, as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Despite her enthusiasm, director Jonathan Demme did not initially want to cast her, but the producers overruled him. Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character.
Released in February 1991, The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling; Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender. Much of the criticism was directed at Foster, who the critics claimed was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. Later in 1991, Foster also starred in the unsuccessful low-budget thriller Catchfire, which had been filmed before Silence, but was released after it in an attempt to profit from its success.
In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director, Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Some reviewers felt that the film did not live up to the high expectations, and regarded it as "less adventurous than many films in which [she] had starred", but others praised it, like Roger Ebert, who called it "the kind of film you enjoy watching". Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.
Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor. She then replaced Meg Ryan in the Western comedy Maverick (1994), playing a con artist opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, both films featured her in more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both Sommersby and Maverick were commercially successful.
Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production, Nell, in December 1994. It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language. The film was based on Mark Handley's play Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance.
The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. In 1996, Foster received two honorary awards: the Crystal Award, awarded annually for women in the entertainment industry, and the Berlinale Camera at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of The X-Files in early 1997.
After Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by Carl Sagan and directed by Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced Jane Anderson's television film The Baby Dance (1998) for Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in Louisiana. On her decision to produce for television, Foster stated that it was easier to take financial risks in that medium than in feature films. In 1998, she also moved her production company from PolyGram to Paramount Pictures. Also in 1998, asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster was named in her honor.
Foster's last film of the 1990s was the period drama Anna and the King (1999), in which she starred opposite Chow Yun-Fat. It was based on a fictionalized biography of British teacher Anna Leonowens, who taught the children of King Mongkut of Siam, and whose story became well known as the musical The King and I. Foster was paid $15 million to portray Leonowens, making her one of the highest-paid female actors in Hollywood. The film was subject to controversy when the Thai government deemed it historically inaccurate and insulting to the royal family and banned its distribution in the country. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Ebert panned the film, saying the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".