Oscar Nominee Jodie Foster Gave Herself a Funny Unofficial Honor for Her ‘Nyad’ Role

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Jodie Foster Now: Actor Seeks Third Oscar Win for Nyad

Jodie Foster could win her third overall Oscar, and first for Best Supporting Actress, on March 10 at the 96^th Academy Awards. However, the Nyad star has already given herself another, more playful, honor.

During a recent interview with CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, Foster, 61, discussed her role in the 2023 biopic, starring Annette Bening as long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, and how easy it was compared to that of her costar. “As I say, I was best supporting abs because I just, I never had to get in the water. I basically just stood on the boat and sucked in my stomach and my jogger bra, and that was pretty much all I had to do. And shouted at [Bening],” Foster jokingly explained.

While her directions might have been simple, Foster’s performance was far from it. Her portrayal of Nyad’s real-life friend and trainer Bonnie Stoll earned the actor a supporting actress nod alongside Emily Blunt, Danielle Brooks, America Ferrera, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Foster previously won Oscars for her leading roles in The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

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Who Is Jodie Foster?

Jodie Foster is an award-winning actor and Emmy-nominated director. She received her first Oscar nomination at age 14 for her role as a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver and has since won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. The four-time Golden Globe recipient has also starred in the popular movies Contact and Panic Room. Foster’s most recent roles include in the 2023 biopic Nyad, alongsideAnnette Bening, and the HBO anthology series True Detective: Night Country.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Alicia Christian Foster
BORN: November 19, 1962
BIRTHPLACE: Los Angeles, California
SPOUSE: Alexandra Hedison (2014-present)
CHILDREN: Charles and Kit
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio

Life as a Child Actor

Alicia Christian Foster—better known by her nickname “Jodie”—was born in Los Angeles on November 19, 1962. The daughter of Evelyn “Brandy” Ella and Lucius Fisher Foster III, Jodie is the youngest of four children. The future Academy Award winner began her acting career at the tender age of 3, with a role as the Coppertone Girl in a television commercial for the iconic suntan lotion brand.

A precocious and bright child from the start, Foster began talking at 9 months and had taught herself to read by the time she was 3 years old. Despite never having taken an acting class, she dove headlong into show business in 1968 with her first television show, Mayberry R.F.D. From there, she continued on to a busy career as a child actor, with Brandy always by her side, playing the dual role of manager and mother. “I still treasure her impact. She was very strong, self-educated but wasn’t pushy. She’d stay in the trailer and read magazines while I worked,” Jodie later recalled.

Foster’s first forays on the big screen came with roles in the Disney movies Napoleon and Samantha (1972) and One Little Indian (1973). All the while, Foster was studying at the private prep school Lycée Français de Los Angeles, juggling a challenging course load and becoming fluent in French.

Breakthrough with Taxi Driver

Foster’s breakout movie role came in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 crime thriller Taxi Driver, set in the gritty underbelly of 1970s-era New York. Foster, cast when she was only 12 years old, played a child prostitute who becomes the obsession of title character Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro.

Foster garnered wide praise, as did the movie, which was added to the National Film Registry in 1994. Well-known film critic Roger Ebert described Foster as “chillingly cast” for the role. Taxi Driver earned Foster her first Oscar nomination, though she ultimately lost to Beatrice Straight for Network. Still, the part established her as a teenage star and led to roles in popular movies like Freaky Friday (1976) and Foxes (1980), further cementing her place as one of Hollywood’s next darlings.

Connection to Reagan Assassination Attempt

While everything seemed to be going right for Foster, she was uncomfortable with her growing fame. In search of anonymity and an ordinary collegiate experience, she enrolled in Yale University after graduating high school. The famous Ivy League rigor didn’t seem to intimidate the young actor, as she immediately enrolled in upper level French courses. “I chose Yale basically for writing and literature,” she says. “Of course, you can’t be sure—you get your first D and could decide to be a chemistry major.”

But her dream of a quiet college life was dashed in 1981, when a disturbed man named John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan and said he did it in order to impress Foster. Hinckley had become obsessed with the famous student, writing her love letters and calling her on the phone. She eventually testified during Hinckley’s trial and admitted to being badly shaken by the experience.

Nevertheless, Foster returned to work shortly after the incident, starring in Svengali alongside Peter O’Toole, finding in acting a release from the intense and unwanted scrutiny Hinckley’s actions had drawn her way.

Oscars for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs

After graduating from Yale in 1985 with a literature degree, Foster made the transition from child star to mature actor, appearing in a series of mostly unremarkable pictures through the mid-1980s.

Her next widely acclaimed role came in another intense and gritty picture, when she played sexual assault survivor Sarah Tobias in The Accused (1988). For the performance, the 26-year-old won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Motion Picture, establishing her as one of Hollywood’s most esteemed actors.

Only three years later, Foster made a strong impression again with her lead performance as FBI agent Clarice Starling in the blockbuster hit The Silence of the Lambs, based on the 1988 novel by Thomas Harris. Foster’s character goes head to head with the unforgettable psychopath Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 movie. The Silence of the Lambs drew critical praise, earning five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Foster. She also collected her second Golden Globe for the performance.

The movie’s success spawned two sequels, Hannibal in 2001 and Red Dragon in 2002; the 2007 prequel Hannibal Rising; and two television spinoffs. However, Foster didn’t reprise her role. Instead, Julianne Moore became Clarice Starling for Hannibal.

Directing Work

Firmly established as one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and enjoying the professional and financial freedom to follow a different path, Foster turned to directing. When asked about the differences between acting and directing, she said: “Well, you have control, but you also have 175 people involved. Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m always so energized by directing. It’s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It’s a huge passion for me.”

Her feature-film directorial debut, Little Man Tate (1991), won widespread plaudits from critics. Since then, Foster has directed: Home for the Holidays (1995); The Beaver (2011), which she co-starred in with Mel Gibson; and Money Monster (2016).

She has also directed episodes of popular TV shows such as Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. Although Orange Is the New Black was her first television directing gig, it earned her a 2014 Emmy nomination.

More Recent Movies and True Detective

Between her occasional directorial projects, Foster has continued to act in hit movies such as Nell (1994), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), and the box-office smash Panic Room (2002). Nell, which she also helped produced, continued her string of award-worthy performances. She starred in the lead role as a young woman raised in complete isolation by her mother inside a cabin, alongside Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. Foster was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Oscar, though she didn’t win either.

Foster’s choice of scripts spans from blockbuster to indie and foreign. In The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002), she played a nun, Sister Assumpta, while also producing the film. She then took a small part in a French film The Very Long Engagement (2004).

Foster returned to big-budget Hollywood fare with 2005’s Flightplan and 2006’s Inside Man but has been very selective about her projects in recent years. She worked with director Roman Polanski on his dramatic comedy Carnage in 2011. In the movie, Foster and John C. Reilly played a New York City couple who become involved in a dispute with another couple (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz). For the 2013 sci-fi film Elysium, Foster starred opposite Matt Damon as a villainous defense official of the titular space station.

Also in 2013, Foster received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, an honorary Golden Globe Award that is annually awarded to a performer for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment” by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

In 2021, Foster won her third Golden Globe as an actor—this time, for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture—for her work in The Mauritian.

Most recently, she portrayed Bonnie Stoll, the friend and coach of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, in the 2023 movie Nyad. The role earned Foster her 10^th Golden Globe nomination and an Academy Award nomination for Actress in a Supporting Role.

To start 2024, Foster also took a turn in Season 4 of the HBO anthology series True Detective as detective Liz Danvers. Creator and director Issa López says True Detective: Night Country is indirectly influenced by Silence of the Lambs and Foster’s Oscar-winning performance in it. “It’s impossible to do serial killers the same way after Hannibal [Lecter],” López told EW. “The book is extraordinary, but it was the movie [that did that], and it was Jodie, so it was a no-brainer to go back there.”

Wife and Children

In April 2014, Foster married photographer and actor Alexandra Hedison in a private weekend ceremony. Hedison’s largest role has been in the TV series The L Word, though she also appeared in one episode each of Melrose Place and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the mid-1990s.

Foster and Hedison, who was previously in a four-year relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, began dating in October 2013. The couple rarely appears in public together and prefer to keep details of their relationship private, though Hedison did appear with her wife over Zoom as Foster remotely accepted her 2021 Golden Globe Award.

The first time Foster publicly talked about being a lesbian was during her January 2013 acceptance speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award. She thanked her former partner Cydney Bernard, describing her as “one of the deepest loves of my life... my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most beloved BFF of 20 years.”

Foster and Bernard met on the set of the 1993 film Sommersby. Their two sons—Charles, born in 1998, and Kit, born in 2001—were conceived by in vitro fertilization, but Foster hasn’t revealed the identity of their father. “I am so proud of our modern family,” Foster said in her 2013 acceptance speech. “Our amazing sons, Charlie and Kit, who are my reason to breathe and to evolve, my blood and soul.”

Quotes

• I don’t know why people think child actresses in particular are screwed up. I see kids everywhere who are totally bored. I’ve never been bored a day in my life.

• Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m always so energized by directing.
  

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