Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress and filmmaker. Her accolades include two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2013 and the Honorary Palme d'Or in 2021.
Foster began her career as a child model and gained recognition as a teen idol through Disney films including Napoleon and Samantha (1972), Freaky Friday (1976), and Candleshoe (1977). She appeared in Martin Scorsese's comedy-drama Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974). For her role as a teenage prostitute in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Other early films include Tom Sawyer (1973), Bugsy Malone (1976), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), Carny (1980), and Foxes (1980).
After attending Yale University, Foster transitioned into mature leading roles and won Academy Awards for Best Actress for playing a rape victim in The Accused (1988) and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). She was also nominated for her performance in Nell (1994). Her other films include Sommersby (1993), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), Anna and the King (1999), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Brave One (2007), Nim's Island (2008), Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), The Mauritanian (2021). Nyad (2023) earned Foster her fifth Oscar nomination. In 2024, she starred in the HBO anthology series True Detective: Night Country, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe award.
Foster made her directorial debut with Little Man Tate (1991) and has since directed films such as Home for the Holidays (1995), The Beaver (2011), and Money Monster (2016). She founded a production company, Egg Pictures, in 1992. Foster also received Primetime Emmy nominations for producing The Baby Dance (1998) and for directing the Orange Is the New Black episode "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013). She has also directed episodes of Tales from the Darkside (1988), House of Cards (2014), the Black Mirror episode "Arkangel" (2017), and Tales from the Loop (2020).
