"I just don't buy it," says Jodie Foster, flatly. "I don't believe in this idea that the only movies women want to see are the small, rosy-coloured, sepia stories where people say 'I love you' all the time. Films should be made for people — not just for women, or just for me either for that matter!"

Jodie Foster simply loves laying down the law. Her friends call her BLT, short for 'Bossy Little Thing'. On the other hand, those same friends — and after 27 years in showbusiness, you'd have to search Hollywood pretty hard to find someone who doesn't like Jodie — also agree that she does usually know what she's talking about. And when it comes to talking about the subject of men and women in films, you'd be hard pushed to find someone else who's more in the know.

This is, after all, a young woman who at 31, has already received two Oscars for Best Actress — one for playing a rape victim in The Accused, the other as the tough detective in Silence of the Lambs. In neither film, it has to be said, could her part be described as insubstantial.

Since then, she has gone on to direct and act in the acclaimed Little Man Tate, and to star opposite Richard Gere in the period romance Sommersby; soon, she will be seen playing opposite Mel Gibson in the film Maverick, and after that, there are plans to make Nell, the story of a woman brought up alone in the woods by a hermit mother. Quite a variety of roles in a profession where most of her female colleagues complain constantly about the lack of good parts on offer.

"I recognise that I'm one of the luckier women in Hollywood," she admits. "I have been working for over 25 years now, which means that I do have a certain clout. I know who people are around town, and most of them know me. Let's face it, I more or less grew up on a movie set!"

Her parents split up four months before Jodie was even born. Once she arrived, her mother, Brandy, decided she and her young baby plus her three other children, Connie, Lucinda and Buddy, should move with her to live in a suburb of Los Angeles, near to Hollywood. And she enrolled Buddy with an agent where he managed to make some extra money by starring in adertisements.

Just by chance, three-year-old Jodie went along to one of Buddy's auditions for a Coppertone commercial and ended up landing the part herself. And from then on, says the actress, her career really took off.

Almost overnight she became the top child star in Hollywood, with parts in Gunsmoke, Bonanza and The Partridge Family, and by the tender age of seven she had become the main breadwinner in the family. They rented a house near the beach and all the children went to good schools, courtesy of Jodie's earnings.

"Despite all the work I did as a child, I don't think my family ever envisaged me going on to become an actor as an adult," she says. "When I wasn't acting, I had a very normal life in suburban Los Angeles, with high school and barbecues on Sundays and things like that. And to me, the whole Hollywood aspect of my life was like a weird little party I went to, and thought was hysterically funny, and then I went home to my brother and sisters — back to my real life!"

She shrugs off any suggestion that her upbringing might have been unusual. "Anything that you do in your life has an effect on you. I grew up the youngest of four in a single parent household. If I'd grown up in a two-parent family, or if I'd grown up, for instance, in the mountains outside Lima, Peru, and had sheep for friends and wore fabulous little woollen hats, then I'd have had a totally different childhood — agreed. But that certainly doesn't mean one is any better than the other.

"My childhood may not have been what you call normal, but it was very healthy, and very productive in a lot of ways. I travelled all over the world when I was very young. I got to talk to grown up people, and I actually found that they listened to what I had to say. I can honestly say that I wouldn't have changed my childhood in any way."

Jodie made her screen debut at the age of nine in a Disney adventure called Napoleon and Samantha, with Michael Douglas. Her co-star in the film was a seemingly devoted pet lion. However, the big cat showed another side off-screen, when on one occasion Jodie had to be rushed to the hospital after it got out of control and attacked her. According to those in the know, this was the first and only time that Jodie let a co-star get the better of her.

Jodie's mother was also very concerned that her daughter didn't sacrifice her education for her acting career, and so she sent her to one of the most exclusive, prestigious and demanding schools in California, Le Lycee Francais, where she became fluent in French and graduated top of her class. From there she went on to Yale University to study American literature.

But her love for acting never diminished and between the ages of 10 and 18, Jodie appeared in 16 films, taking on a diversity of roles which included the hard-bitten, seductive mistress in Bugsy Malone and a pre-teen prostitute in Taxi Driver, for which she won an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

Today, Jodie is one of the best liked actresses of her generation, a friendly, determinedly down-to-earth young woman who hangs out with old friends from high school, and, unlike most of her peers, refuses to hire a personal assistant.

"No matter how much money I make, I'll always drop my own letters at the post office, and pick up my own laundry. What am I going to do with my time if I don't do those things — make yet more phone calls? I'd rather live than sit there making phone calls, thanks!"

Besides, she points out, personal assistants cost money. "And although I wouldn't say I'm mean, let's just say I'm frugal! I certainly don't want to be dependent on making lots of money. I don't want to have the huge car, and the yacht, and the seven zillion dollar house in Beverly Hills witth a huge mortgage, so that I have to make films like The Towering Inferno every other week just to make ends meet. I'd rather live more simply — in the real world — and have complete freedom about the sort of work that I do."

She has been fanatically private about her personal life since 1981, when an obsessed fan, John Hinckley, tried to impress her by attempting to assassinate President Reagan and three of his colleagues. A few days later, while Jodie was appearing on stage in New York, a man in the audience was arrested for carrying a gun. He later admitted to the police that he had intended to kill her.

These two incredibly distressing incidents obviously deeply affected Jodie, so much so that even now, 13 years later, the subject is strictly taboo. "It's nobody's business," she says politely but firmly, "and I just don't think it's cool to talk about it." Some close to her maintain that it has left her with a fear of deep relationships, wary of getting too involved with anyone. She may have plenty of friends, but she has never admitted to being close enough to anyone to consider marriage.

"Nobody knows what happens between two people," she says. "Who you embrace into your family is such a personal thing. I've gone through the same thing with friends that we all have — friends who have got divorced, and you think, 'Why?' Or friends who have split up and then got back together, and you think, 'God, but they're so poorly suited. But I don't judge other people. I only know what's right for me.

"Children? I think about them, but I'm not obsessed about having them. I have nephews and nieces I'm fond of. I do see children in my own future, but I don't know that it'll happen. I certainly hope so — but one thing about getting older is that it makes you realise you never know what life has in store!"

Meanwhile, the actress is happy to divide her energies between working hard when she is making a film &mdash and not working at all between movies.

"When you're making a movie, you have a 12-hour working day, and probably another three hours on top of that. So what I've learned to do is to work very hard when I do — and to relax very, very hard when I don't.

"My favourite day, when I'm not working, is to stay in my house in my pyjamas for a week, just playing my favourite records, cooking for friends — I make a mean leeks vinaigrette — and laughing hysterically at very bad television shows.

"My friends are very important to me. Some of them are in showbusiness, some are not. My friends are like my family."

But her best friend of all, she says, is her mother. "We're very close. Not possessively so — in fact, even when we're both in Los Angeles, we don't see each other very much. But we always travel together, and she always comes with me when I'm filming.

"I need someone who makes me normal and keeps my feet on the ground. Someone with whom I know I'm not going to be able to get away with anything.

"If my mother thinks I'm being a jerk, she doesn't hide it. She just tells me straight, 'Jodie. You're being a real jerk. Stop it.'"