Jodie Foster

Alicia Christian “Jodie” Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. 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.

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), with Johnny Whittaker, Michael Douglas, and Will Geer. Other roles of the early 1970s include Kansas City Bomber (1972), with Raquel Welch and Kevin McCarthy; Don Taylor’s Tom Sawyer (1973), with Whittaker, Celeste Holme, Warren Oates; One Little Indian (1974), with James Garner, Vera Miles. The supporting cast includes Pat Hingle, John Doucette, Morgan Woodward, and Andrew Prine; and Martin Scorsese‘s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), with Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Billy “Green” Bush, Diane Ladd, Valerie Curtin, Lelia Goldoni, Vic Tayback, Alfred Lutter, and Harvey Keitel.

Foster received her first Academy Award nomination (in the Best Supporting Actress category) playing a child prostitute in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), with Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, and Albert Brooks. Other films in the late 1970s include Echoes of Summer (1976), with Richard Harris, Lois Nettleton, Brad Savage, and Geraldine Fitzgerald; Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone (1976), with Scott Baio and John Cassisi; The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), with Martin Sheen, Alexis Smith, Mort Shuman, and Scott Jacoby; Freaky Friday (1976), with Barbara Harris, John Astin, Patsy Kelly, Dick Van Patten, Sorrell Booke and Charlene Tilton; and Norman Tokar’s Candleshoe (1977), with David Niven, Helen Hayes, and Leo McKern.

Films in the early 1980s include Adrian Lyne’s Foxes (1980), with Baio, Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, and Cherie Currie; Carny (1980), with Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson, Meg Foster, Kenneth McMillan, Elisha Cook Jr., Tim Thomerson, and Theodore Wilson; O’Hara’s Wife (1982), with Edward Asner, Mariette Hartley, Tom Bosley, Perry Lang, and Ray Walston; Anthony Harvey’s TV movie Svengali (1983), with Peter O’Toole; Tony Richardson’s The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), with Beau Bridges, Rob Lowe, Nastassja Kinski, Wilford Brimley, Amanda Plummer, Matthew Modine, Wallace Shawn, and Seth Green; and Claude Charbol’s TV movie The Blood of Others (1984), with Michael Ontkean, Sam Neill, Lambert Wilson, and Stéphane Audran.

Foster won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused (1988), with Kelly McGillis, Bernie Coulson, Leo Rossi, Ann Hearn, Carmen Argenziano, Steve Antin and Tom O’Brie. Other films in the late 1980s include Mesmerized (1986), with John Lithgow and Michael Murphy; Siesta (1987), with Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Isabella Rossellini, Sheen, Alexi Sayles, and Graces Jones; and Stealing Home (1988), with Mark Harmon, Blair Brown, Jonathan Silverman, Harold Ramis, William McNamara, John Shea, Helen Hunt, and Richard Jenkins.

Foster won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991), with Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Anthony Heald, and Kasi Lemmons. She received a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Michael Apted’s Nell (1994), with Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Richard Libertini, and Nick Searcy.

Other films in the 1990s include Backtrack (1990), with Dennis Hopper (who also directed), Dean Stockwell, John Turturro, Fred Ward, and Vincent Price; Shadows and Fog (1991), with Woody Allen (who also directed), Mia Farrow, John Malkovich, Kathy Bates, David Ogden Stiers, Lily Tomlin, John Cusack, Madonna, and Kenneth Mars; Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere, Bill Pullman, James Earl Jones, Clarice Taylor, Frankie Faison, and R. Lee Ermey; Richard Donner’s Maverick (1994), with Mel Gibson, James Garner, Graham Greene, James Coburn, Alfred Molina, Dan Hedaya, and Geoffrey Lewis; Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997), with Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse; and Anna and the King (1999), with Chow Yun-fat.

Films in the 2000s include The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys (2002), with Emile Hirsch, Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone, and Vincent D’Onofrio; David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002), with Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam; Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement (2004), with Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Dominique Pinon, Chantal Neuwirth, André Dussolier, and Ticky Holgado; Flightplan (2005), with Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen, Kate Beahan, Greta Scacchi, Sean Bean, and Matt Bomer; Spike Lee’s Inside Man (2006), with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer, Willam Dafoe, and Chiwetel Ejiofor; Neil Jordan’s The Brave One (2007), with Terrance Howard, Naveen Andrews, Nicky Katt, Zoë Kravitz, Mary Steenburgen, and Luis Da Silva; and Nim’s Island (2008), with Abigail Breslin and Gerard Butler.

Films in the 2010s to early 2020s include Carnage (2011), with Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly; Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013), with Matt Damon, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, and Fichtner; and Hotel Artemis (2018), with Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Charlie Day, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Dave Bautista, and Zachary Quinto; and Kevin Macdonald’s The Mauritanian (2021), with Tahar Rahim, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Zachary Levi.

Foster made her directorial debut with Little Man Tate (1991), costarring with Adam Hann-Byrd, Dianne Wiest, Harry Connick Jr., David Hyde Pierce, Debi Mazar and P.J. Ochlan. She also co-started and directed in The Beaver (2011), with Gibson, Anton Yelchin, and Jennifer Lawrence. Movies she directed but didn’t act in include Home for the Holidays (1995), with Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, Dylan McDermott, Geraldine Chaplin, Steve Guttenberg, Cynthia Stevenson, Claire Danes, Austin Pendleton, and David Strathairn; and Money Monster (2016), with George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell, Dominic West, Caitríona Balfe, and Giancarlo Esposito.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

Menace on the Mountain (1970) – directed by Vincent McEveety – TV movie
My Sister Hank (1972) – directed by Norman Tokar – TV short
Napoleon and Samson (1972) – directed by Bernard McEveety
Kansas City Bomber (1972) – directed by Jerrold Freedman
Tom Sawyer (1973) – directed by Don Taylor
One Little Indian (1973) – directed by Bernard McEveety
Smile Jenny, You’re Dead (1974) – directed by Jerry Thorpe – TV movie
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) – directed by Martin Scorsese
Echoes of Summer (1976) – directed by Don Taylor
Taxi Driver (1976)** – directed by Martin Scorsese
Bugsy Malone (1976) – directed by Alan Parker
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) – directed by Nicolas Gessner
Freaky Friday (1976) – directed by Gary Nelson
Stop Calling Me Baby! (1977) – directed by Éric Le Hung
Beach House (1977) – directed by Sergio Citti
Candleshoe (1977) – directed by Norman Tokar
Foxes (1980) – directed by Adrian Lyne
Carny (1980) – directed by Robert Kaylor
O’Hara’s Wife (1982) – directed by William Bartman
Svengali (1983) – directed by Anthony Harvey – TV movie
The Hotel New Hampshire (1984) – directed by Tony Richardson
The Blood of Others (1984) – directed by Claude Chabrol
Mesmerized (1986) – directed by Michael Laughlin
Siesta (1987) – directed by Mary Lambert
Five Corners (1988) – directed by Tony Bill
Stealing Home (1988) – directed by Steven Kampmann & Will Aldis
The Accused (1988) – directed by Jonathan Kaplan
Backtrack (1990) – directed by Dennis Hopper
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – directed by Jonathan Demme
Little Man Tate (1991) – also director
Shadows and Fog (1991) – directed by Woody Allen
Sommersby (1993) – directed by Jon Amiel
It Was a Wonderful Life (1993) – directed by Michèle Ohayon – narrator – documentary
Maverick (1994) – directed by Richard Donner
Nell (1994) – directed by Michael Apted
Home for the Holidays (1995) – director only
Contact (1997) – directed by Robert Zemeckis
Anna and the King (1999) – directed by Andy Tennant
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) – directed by Peter Care – also producer
Panic Room (2002) – directed by David Fincher
Abby Singer (2003) – directed by Ryan Williams – cameo as herself
A Very Long Engagement (2004) – directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Flightplan (2005) – directed by Robert Schwentke
Inside Man (2006) – directed by Spike Lee
The Brave One (2007) – directed by Neil Jordan
Nim’s Island (2008)* – directed by Jennifer Flackett & Mark Levin
Motherhood (2009) – directed by Katherine Dieckmann – cameo as herself
The Beaver (2011) – also director
Carnage (2011) – directed by Roman Polanski
Elysium (2013) – directed by Neill Blomkamp
Money Monster (2016) – director only
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018) – directed by Pamela B. Green – narrator – documentary
Hotel Artemis (2018)* – directed by Drew Pearce
The Mauritanian (2021) – directed by Kevin Macdonald
Nyad (202-) – directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin

Share this: