Jodie Foster
A child star who became a two-time Oscar winner, she guarded her private life for decades – until a famous speech in 2013.
Jodie Foster grew up in Los Angeles and appeared in television commercials at the age of three. At 13 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a young prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976).
She studied literature at Yale. In 1981 a man obsessed with her tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, claiming he did it to impress her. Foster, then a student, was suddenly at the centre of a media storm – an experience that made her protect her privacy even more.
She won Academy Awards for “The Accused” (1988) and for her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). She also became a director. In 2023 she received another Oscar nomination for “Nyad”.
For decades Foster said nothing in public about her sexuality, although her relationships with women were known in Hollywood. In 2013, accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, she gave a speech in which she acknowledged her former partner and spoke about her right to privacy. In 2014 she married the photographer and actor Alexandra Hedison.