The Full Biography
Jodie Foster. Actress. Director. The Los Angeles child who turned a commercial into a craft, then refused to let a gunman write the rest.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is Clarice Starling in a basement, or a child in the back of a taxi, or a Golden Globes speech that would not hand the room a girlfriend’s name on cue. What the still cannot show is Alicia Christian Foster of Los Angeles, raised by a mother named Brandy, a working minor who treated school as a second job, and a living director who still takes a part when the part is a part.
She was born on November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles, the youngest of Evelyn Ella “Brandy” Almond and Lucius Fisher Foster III. The marriage had already ended. She never built a life with her father. Brandy raised four children, for a time with a female partner, and managed the kids’ bookings after leaving a publicist’s desk. The siblings called the baby Jodie. The name stuck. She learned to read at three. She went to the Lycée Français de Los Angeles and spoke French well enough to deliver the valedictory in that language and, years on, to dub herself.
The door was a Coppertone spot in 1965. Brandy had taken Buddy to an audition and brought the three-year-old along. The camera found the smaller child. More than fifty television shows followed: Mayberry R.F.D., Gunsmoke, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Disney put her in Napoleon and Samantha (1972); a lion on that set left scars on her back. Martin Scorsese used her as a street kid in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). She was already the family’s earner. She has said the commercial years taught her more than a pretty face would have.
Scorsese then cast her as Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute, in Taxi Driver (1976). She was twelve during filming, fourteen when the picture opened. A psychiatrist had to clear her. A social worker stayed on set. Her sister Connie stood in for the suggestive shots. Foster has said it was the first time anyone asked her to build a character that was not herself, and that it was work. The file still argues about a child and a camera. Both stay. She was nominated for Supporting Actress. The same year she did Bugsy Malone, Alan Parker’s gangster musical played entirely by children, and Disney’s Freaky Friday. She hosted Saturday Night Live at thirteen. Cannes used her as a French interpreter at a press conference. The child star had become a fact. She declined to treat it as a personality.
Yale was not a publicity pause. She entered in 1980, read African-American literature, wrote a senior thesis on Toni Morrison under Henry Louis Gates Jr., and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan and attached a fiction to her, built from Taxi Driver and from letters she had not invited. She was a student. There was a security detail. She finished the degree. This is not her plot. She refused, for the rest of a public life, to let a gunman become the biography.
After Yale the parts thinned. She has said she nearly quit and meant The Accused (1988) as one last try. The role was a waitress who survives a gang rape and has to fight the courtroom as well as the bar. Established names had passed. She auditioned twice. The rape scene took five days. She left the shoot unhappy with her work. The Academy gave her Best Actress. Three years later Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) made her Clarice: an F.B.I. trainee sent to interview Hannibal Lecter. She had tried to buy the novel’s rights herself. The picture won the five major Oscars. She was not yet thirty. Two statues. A mind the town had to take seriously twice.
I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age.Jodie Foster, Golden Globes, 2013
Before Yale the child-star catalog is longer than Iris and a Disney swap. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) put her in a house with a secret. Candleshoe (1977) was another Disney week. Foxes (1980), for Adrian Lyne, is a San Fernando Valley teenager the camera would not pretty up. Carny (1980) opposite Gary Busey and Robbie Robertson is a midway picture she took as work. She hosted Saturday Night Live at thirteen. Cannes used her as a French interpreter. The child star had become a fact. She declined to treat it as a personality. She packed for New Haven. The pictures between Yale and the two statues are a ledger the basement still tries to eat. The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), from John Irving, put her in a family the plot would damage. Five Corners (1987) and Stealing Home (1988) are the kind of independent weeks a former child star takes when the town has filed her as finished. Then The Accused (1988), for Jonathan Kaplan at Paramount: Sarah Tobias, a waitress, a bar, a courtroom. Established names had passed. She auditioned twice. The rape scene took five days. She left the shoot unhappy with her work. The Academy gave her Best Actress in March 1989. Three years after that, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) made her Clarice Starling, an F.B.I. trainee sent to interview Hannibal Lecter. She had tried to buy Thomas Harris’s novel rights herself. The picture won the five major Oscars. She was not yet thirty. Two statues. A mind the town had to take seriously twice. The 1990s were the job at scale and the second occupation. Sommersby (1993) opposite Richard Gere. Richard Donner’s Maverick (1994) as a comic foil for Mel Gibson. Nell (1994), which Egg Pictures produced, put her in a mountain cabin as a woman raised without ordinary speech and brought a third Best Actress nomination. Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997), from Carl Sagan, put her in headphones as Dr. Ellie Arroway. Anna and the King (1999) opposite Chow Yun-fat is a costume picture that asked her to carry a court. She declined to play Clarice again in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001); the part went to Julianne Moore. She shut Egg Pictures the same year and said producing was a thankless job. Directing remained. In 1991, the same year as Clarice, she directed Little Man Tate, a picture about a gifted child and the mother who will not sell him. She had pulled Scott Frank’s script from a slush pile and played the mother herself. Home for the Holidays (1995) put Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. in a Thanksgiving that would not behave. The Beaver (2011) asked Mel Gibson to work through a puppet. Money Monster (2016) put George Clooney and Julia Roberts in a live financial hostage hour. Television episodes of Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror (“Arkangel,” 2017) treated the chair as a second parish, not a vanity credit. Four features. Series work. The “actress who also” line is too small. That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the basement, not the chair. She did not become a child star’s wreck or a waxwork of 1991. She became a director who still acts when the part is worth the calendar. She also kept French as a working language: Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement (2004) used her in a small role she could dub herself. The Lycée had already made that possible. The clock she kept is the file.
Six things most people never knew
- Alicia is the given name. The siblings made her Jodie. Los Angeles. A child-star shop she outgrew by treating school as a second job.
- Taxi Driver is a performance and an argument. She was twelve on set. Connie stood in. She has been clear it was work. The file still argues. Both stay.
- Hinckley is 1981, a fiction he attached to a student. She did not write that plot. The security is in the file. The biography is not his.
- Yale is a literature degree, not a garnish. Magna cum laude, 1985. A Toni Morrison thesis. The Lycée had already made her valedictorian in French.
- She directed as a second occupation, not a vanity credit. Four features. Series work. The “actress who also” line is too small.
- The private life runs on her clock. Two sons. A marriage she named when she chose. The cue-card culture did not get to run the evening.
She had two sons, Charles and Kit, with the producer Cydney Bernard, her partner from the early 1990s until 2008. They met on Sommersby. The boys were kept, as much as a first-rank career allows, off the carpet as a product. In 2014 she married the photographer Alexandra Hedison. At the 2013 Golden Globes, collecting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, she spoke about a life she said she had already named a thousand years earlier. Friends from sets describe a professional who is first on her mark, kind to a crew, and finished with a false line. The Foster in a cutting room is the same first-and-finished without a speech.
The later years
The years after Clarice were not a retirement. David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002), after Nicole Kidman left the picture with an injury, opened like a hit: a mother and a daughter in a sealed Manhattan room. Robert Schwentke’s Flightplan (2005) put her on an aircraft as a woman the crew would not believe. Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006) made her a fixer opposite Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Neil Jordan’s The Brave One (2007) asked her to play a radio host who takes a gun after an assault. Nim’s Island (2008) and Roman Polanski’s Carnage (2011), from Yasmina Reza, kept her in rooms that required a mind. Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) used her as a cold official on a space station. Hotel Artemis (2018) was a night nurse in a criminal hospital. She shut Egg Pictures in 2001. Directing remained. So did French work.
The private life ran on her clock. Charles and Kit, the sons with Cydney Bernard, were kept off the carpet as a product. In 2014 she married the photographer Alexandra Hedison in a ceremony they did not sell. At the 2013 Golden Globes, collecting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, she spoke about a life she said she had already named a thousand years earlier, in the Stone Age. Friends from sets describe a professional who is first on her mark, kind to a crew, and finished with a false line. The Foster in a cutting room is the same first-and-finished without a speech. The house is not a tour. The cue-card culture did not get to run the evening.
In the 2020s the town rediscovered that she had not left. Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian (2021) put her in a courtroom as Nancy Hollander, a defense lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee. Nyad (2023), for Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, made her Bonnie Stoll, the best friend and coach beside Annette Bening’s Diana Nyad, and brought another Oscar nomination, this time in supporting. True Detective: Night Country (2024), for Issa López at HBO, put her in Ennis, Alaska, as Chief Liz Danvers and brought a Primetime Emmy and another Golden Globe. She is in her sixties. She is still employed. The child in the taxi and the agent in the basement remain the clips.
The chair in the 2010s and 2020s is the same first-and-finished as the 1991 slush pile. She directed Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards as a hired professional, not as a celebrity guest. “Arkangel” on Black Mirror is a mother who will not stop watching a child — a theme she had already directed in Little Man Tate without a sci-fi frame. She still takes a part when the part is a part. She still leaves when the work is done. The house with Hedison is not a tour. Los Angeles is the first room. The Lycée is the language. Yale is the hinge. The chair, the marriage to Hedison, and the sons now grown are the life. What she has done since the statues is not a farewell to Clarice. It is the same job she took as a three-year-old in a Coppertone spot: show up, build a character that is not herself, leave the room when the work is done. Hinckley still tries to write the plot. This page will not let him. The clock she kept is the file.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the next Clarice and then came back every time a child star needed a path, or a magazine needed a coming-out as a product. Scorsese still arrives in the same sentence. Hinckley still tries to. Yale and the chair are the correction. The clock she kept is the file.
She came out of Los Angeles, worked as a child, survived a gunman’s fiction, won twice, directed, named a life when she chose, and kept the house off the cue card. If you only remember the basement, you have the still. If you remember Yale, the chair, and the clock, you have her.
Portrait: Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons