Jodie Foster

In Jodie Foster’s earliest roles, she is alarming for the realism she brings to her characters. A talented actress who was entirely self-trained, Jodie Foster seemed precocious in her youth because she happens to be a very brilliant woman; by the time she reached the age of 18, she had mastered both French and Italian and was on her way to Yale to study English literature. Jodie Foster managed all of this on top of several TV and film roles that thrust her before the public eye when she appeared opposite Robert DeNiro’s deranged titular Taxi Driver character in the 1976 film directed by Martin Scorsese.

Adding to the buzz was that the then 14-year old Jodie Foster was playing a child prostitute. The excitement was enough to see her set a record for what been the youngest person ever to host Saturday Night Live. In the same year of these major appearances she had another standout role in the fantastical comedy Freaky Friday. Her unusual maturity made her ideal for the part, as it required her to play the role of a teenage girl who temporarily switches bodies with her mother—forcing both of them to live the other’s life. While she had already garnered an Oscarâ nomination for her performance in Taxi Driver, Freaky Friday confirmed her versatility as an actress, as well as her comic talent.

Jodie Foster was to win two Oscarsâ by her thirtieth birthday—most famously for her role as Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs, which featured Foster as a detective on the trail of a cannibalistic killer played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Despite these achievements, Foster (born November 19, 1962) has recently focused on her two children. She is known to have a strong aversion to the trappings of fame (J.D. Salinger is her favorite author), but admits that being a household name comes in handy when trying to secure restaurant reservations in Hollywood.