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Lots of toddlers are photogenic, but how many of them are so remarkably darling that they get featured in a national TV ad campaign? Young Jodie Foster had such a unique rapport with the camera, and as a pig-tailed tyke of three, she appeared in her first commercial, a widely circulated pitch for Coppertone suntan lotion. One TV advertisement does not an actress make, but by the time Foster had reached the age of eight, her repertoire had expanded from one commercial to forty, and there was little doubt that the Coppertone tot was no mere cutie pie--she was a genuine prodigy. Both television series and feature films were old hat for Foster by the time she won her first Oscar nomination, at age fourteen, for her performance as a twelve-year-old prostitute in Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese's seminal mean-streets drama. Childhood celebrity can be emotionally scarring under the best possible circumstances, but Foster suffered through one of the most bizarre episodes of fan worship in Hollywood history, when would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, then claimed that he had done it to impress the young actress, who was in her freshman year at Yale at the time of the incident. Somehow, in spite of all the madness, Jodie Foster grew up to be a thoroughly likeable, emotionally stable adult, not to mention one of Hollywood's most respected actresses. Jodie's father hit the road while she, the youngest of his four children, was
still in the womb, leaving Moving around became a way of life for Foster, who spent a great deal of her
teenage years living
Intensely private with respect to the details of her personal life (she
remains adamantly close- |
his wife Evelyn to raise the brood on her own.
Everyone has embarrassing baby pictures taken of them, but Foster suffered the
indignity of going bare-bottomed before the eyes of an entire nation after
Coppertone ad executives spotted her at one of her brother Buddy's auditions and
showcased her--sans clothing--in one of their commercials. Jodie's
fortuitous sunscreen stumping prompted Evelyn to quit her job as a Hollywood
publicist to manage the acting careers of her children full-time. At the age of
six, Foster spoke her first line of dialogue--"I'm the good fairy"--in
an episode of Mayberry R.F.D., a sitcom on which Buddy appeared regularly.
Buddy's career petered out not long thereafter, but Foster went on to win a
recurring role on the short-lived series The Courtship of Eddie's Father; soon, her acting jobs were supporting the entire family. At ten, Foster made the
leap from the small to the big screen for the Disney flick Napoleon and
Samantha (1972), sharing top billing with fellow cute-as-a-button kiddie
star Johnny Whitaker. Producers at United Artists liked the pairing so much that
they cast Foster and Whitaker as Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer in Tom Sawyer
the following year. By the time she delivered her knockout performance in Taxi
Driver, Foster had five feature-film roles under her belt.
in hotels and working on movie sets; she even called Paris
home for a year. She attended the exclusive Le Lycée Français prep school in
Los Angeles, graduating as class valedictorian (she delivered her valedictory
speech in flawless French), and switched coasts in 1980 to attend Yale
University. During her high school years, Foster appeared in a string of largely
forgettable movies, such as Disney's Freaky Friday and the angst-ridden Foxes,
offerings that disappointed the nation's film critics, who believed she was
capable and worthy of much more challenging fare. While at Yale, Foster
disappeared into her comparative literature studies and attempted to maintain a
low profile, efforts that were complicated immeasurably by the publicity
surrounding her entirely circumstantial connection to the psychotically obsessed
Hinckley. In the months following Hinckley's attempt to assassinate Reagan,
Foster was so bedeviled by newshounds that she published an essay titled "Why
Me?" in Esquire, and refused to discuss the incident further with
anyone. After years of adamant silence, Foster eventually opened up in a 1997
interview published in Premiere magazine, in which she told interviewer
Holly Millea: "People go through worse shit. So I've always hated the 'poor
me' idea. But it was a hard time. It took me many, many, many years to figure
all that out."
After graduating with honors from Yale in 1985, Foster slogged through
several films that were critical and commercial disappointments before finally
coming of age in director Jonathan Kaplan's 1988 courtroom drama, The Accused.
Scoring a Best Actress Oscar for her astounding performance as a rape victim who
fights an extended legal skirmish to see that her attackers receive just
punishment, Foster fully realized the promise she had first evidenced so many
years before in Taxi Driver. Taking full advantage of her reborn
celebrity, Foster made her directorial debut with the 1991 drama Little Man
Tate, in which she also starred; the luster of her Oscar triumph had
scarcely faded when she scored another huge hit with The Silence of the Lambs
that same year. Although her performance as federal agent Clarice Starling in
that film was somewhat overshadowed by Anthony Hopkins's magnificent turn as
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, Foster's dead-on Appalachian accent
and convincingly professional manner were believable enough to warrant a second
Best Actress Oscar. In 1994, her production company, Egg Pictures, released the
acclaimed Nell, which earned her another Best Actress nomination.
Justifiably rewarded with her pick of scripts, Foster demonstrated both romantic
and comedic flair--in Sommersby and Maverick, respectively--before
stepping behind the camera again for 1995's Home for the Holidays.
