Jodie Foster (born November 19, 1962) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, director, and producer. She has also won two Golden Globes, BAFTA and a Screen Actors Guild Award. After appearing as a child in several commercials, Foster won her first role in the 1970 TV movie Menace on the Mountain, followed by several Disney productions. Foster did not experience her breakout role until 1976, when she received moderate recognition but great acclaim for her role as a pre-teenage prostitute in Taxi Driver, receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She won an Oscar for Best Actress in 1988, for playing a rape victim in The Accused. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs as Clarice Starling, a gifted FBI Agent investigating a serial killer. For this performance she received international acclaim and another Oscar for Best Actress. Her films and roles have spanned a wide variety of genres, including thrillers, crime, romance, comedy, children's movies, and science fiction. Popular later films include the box office successes Contact (1997), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005) and Inside Man (2006).
Foster was born as Alicia Christian Foster to Lucius Foster III and Evelyn 'Brandy' (née Almond) in Los Angeles, California. Her father, an Air Force colonel turned real estate broker, came from a wealthy background and left Foster's family a few months before she was born; her mother supported the family by working as a film producer. She attended an exclusive French-speaking prep school, the Lycée Français de Los Angeles, and graduated valedictorian before going to Yale University where she earned a B.A. in literature and graduated magna cum laude in 1985. While at Yale, Foster, like fellow 1985 Yale graduate Jennifer Beals of Flashdance fame, led a fairly normal life, considering her celebrity status. She would often spend time with friends at the local dive bar Anchor, and she occasionally partied in the haunts of one of the secret societies, the Manuscript Society (a scene recounting such an event is noted in Tom Perrotta's novel Joe College).
She has two sisters and a brother, Lucinda "Cindy" Foster (born 1954), Constance "Connie" Foster (b. 1955), and Lucius "Buddy" Foster (b. 1957). During the filming of both Taxi Driver and The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Connie was her stand-in. Foster is intensely private about certain aspects of her personal life, notably her sexual orientation which has been the subject of speculation. Foster has been reluctant to openly discuss any aspect of her relationships with the media. Foster pulled out of the film Double Jeopardy when she became pregnant, and filmed Panic Room during the first months of her second pregnancy. She has two sons, Charles (b. 1998) and Kit (b. 2001); Foster has never identified or discussed their father. Foster does not follow any "traditional religion," but has "great respect for all religions" and enjoys reading religious texts.
She gave the Class of 2006 University of Pennsylvania commencement address on May 15, 2006, the university's 250th commencement. The university also conferred on her the Doctor of Arts (honoris causa) degree for her lifelong achievement and contribution to film in both acting and directing. Her commencement address is available in Webcast (jump to 1:44:08) and MP3 format.
