Best-Jodie-Foster-Performances-feature

Jodie Foster has not only been able to avoid the traps into which far too many former child stars have fallen, but has become one of the most lauded and respected women in the industry today. With four Academy Award nominations and two wins, and nearly 100 acting, directing, and producing credits to her name, Jodie Foster has been showing us how it’s done for nearly six decades. She shows no signs of slowing down, either, recently joining the cast of the upcoming Nyad biopic, so now is a good time to reflect on Foster’s most impactful performances thus far.

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Audrey in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

In one of her early film performances, 12-year-old Foster shines in a brief, but hilarious role as Audrey, future juvenile delinquent and classmate of Tommy, Alice Hyatt’s (Ellen Burstyn) son. Within minutes of meeting Tommy, Foster’s Audrey tries to convince the shy and awkward boy to get drunk with her on Ripple wine, and within days, she’s showing him how to shoplift from the local music store. The adventures of Tommy and Audrey end in the Tucson police station, and as Audrey exits the station with her mother, feeling no pain from all that Ripple, she turns and salutes the hardworking men and women in blue with a “So long, suckers!” shout out before staggering away. Martin Scorsese directed this Oscar winning film, and in Foster, he obviously saw a star in the making, since he would cast her the next year in one of her most controversial and iconic roles.

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Iris in Taxi Driver (1976)

Although Taxi Driver was released in 1976, filming began in 1975 when Jodie was just 12 years old. Her role as a child prostitute may be one of the most notorious casting decisions ever made in modern cinema, and Foster delivers one of the best performances ever by a young actress. As Iris, the tween runaway turning tricks on the streets of New York, Foster is able to convey the hardened hopelessness of a lost soul three times her age while still showing glimpses of youthful naïveté and playfulness. In one scene, she’s all business, dressed in a halter top and hot pants, face painted with heavy eyeliner and rouge, telling Robert De Niro‘s Travis Bickle his time with her is up once her lit cigarette burns out, and in the next, she’s a tomboy in a t-shirt and jeans, playfully spreading grape jelly and sugar on a piece of toast. It’s difficult to imagine someone of her age having the emotional and intellectual maturity to embody such a complex and layered character, but Foster is so remarkable in the role, she was rightly rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.


Rynn in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

Now a bona fide movie star, Foster followed Taxi Driver with another challenging and controversial role, this time as a young girl harboring some scary secrets in the horror-drama The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Foster plays Rynn Jacobs, a 13-year-old living alone in the home of her recently deceased father (whose corpse she’s hidden in the cellar). She’s also the target of the town’s local pedophile Frank Hallet (played to creepy perfection by Martin Sheen). As Rynn tries to keep Hallet away from her, and as she tries to convince local law enforcement that her father is alive and well, the bodies continue to pile up. There are scenes in this movie that couldn’t possibly be made today. Still, Foster handles her complicated role with the right measure of calm wisdom and sociopathy. Watching Iris calmly observe Hallet’s slow, painful demise after she slips cyanide into his tea is nothing short of chilling.


Annabel in Freaky Friday (1976)

Foster took a break from back-to-back roles in heavy dramas and turned to lighthearted Disney fair with Freaky Friday, one of the first in a long line of body switching-themed comedies to come out of Hollywood. Foster plays Annabel Andrews, an awkward 14-year-old with a mouthful of braces, a little brother who won’t stop annoying her, and a mother (the hysterically funny Barbara Harris) who won’t stop nagging her. In an unexplainable cosmic event, Annabel and her mom switch bodies. Hijinks ensue. It makes perfect sense that Foster would play a teenager transported into the body of an adult, based on her ability to play well beyond her years (e.g., Taxi Driver), and thanks to Foster’s spot-on performance, Freaky Friday rises above the standard slapstick-inspired fare of so many 1970s Disney films and becomes a comedy classic. It’s refreshing and fun to see Foster exercise her comic chops in a movie that many have since imitated, but never surpassed.


Jeanie in Foxes (1980)

Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) directed this gritty, underrated story about San Fernando Valley high schoolers navigating the treacherous waters between adolescence and adulthood. Foster plays Jeanie, a latchkey kid from a broken home and the de facto mother figure to her strung out friend Annie (in a solid acting debut by Runaways vocalist Cherie Currie). Clearly having emerged from her awkward teenage phase, Foster shows a vulnerability in Jeanie audiences hadn’t seen before. Her tense scenes with her neglectful mother, played by Sally Kellerman, are electric, and Foster digs deep to deliver a raw performance filled with anger and pain. This role would mark a progression in Foster’s acting career that would see her beginning to explore other portrayals of strong women also masking inner weaknesses.


Sarah in The Accused (1988)

Foster won her first Best Actress Oscar in this fact-based story about a young woman, brutally gang-raped in a bar, who has the courage to go after her attackers and those who stood by while it occurred. As Sarah Tobias in The Accused, Foster is rough, boozy, drug-addled, and unwise to the machinations of the legal system. But she’s also stalwart and unwavering in her pursuit of justice for the violent degradation she has suffered. Say “goodbye” to teenage Jodie Foster. In The Accused, Foster is all grown up, steely-eyed, and brimming with rage. She’s also as wounded and helpless as a blackbird that’s broken its wing and fallen into muddy soil. Already the victim of a horrendous sexual assault, Sarah is victimized again as she takes the stand during her rapists’ trial, painted by the opposition’s attorneys as drunk, promiscuous, and “asking for it.” Foster’s performance on the stand, struggling to maintain her dignity and composure as the fury within her bubbles to the surface like burning magma within a volcano, is extraordinary.

Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

“Quid pro quo. Yes or no, Clarice?” Thus begins the discomfiting psychological chess game between FBI cadet-in-training Clarice Starling and notorious cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in The Silence of the Lambs. Foster’s Starling is a young woman eager to make her mark, unfaltering and buttoned up on the outside, yet, like Sarah in The Accused, fragile and anxious on the inside, frightened that her weaknesses will be exposed. Sarah’s resolute facade is no match for Lecter’s brilliant and sadistic ability to dissect her inner machinations. He quickly seizes upon them, breaking Clarice down and forcing her to face the traumas and tragedies she’s long hidden away. This is arguably Foster’s most intricate performance, and her scenes with Hopkins are astounding. Director Jonathan Demme incorporates his trademark extreme closeup shots of the lead actors as they engage in their mental hide-and-seek, and Foster is a master at conveying a world of emotion without a single spoken word. It’s the slight twitch of her mouth, the tightening of her jaw, the widening of her steel blue eyes that give viewers a glimpse into what Clarice is feeling. Foster earned her second Best Actress Oscar for her haunting performance.


Jodie’s a Yale graduate, so it seems fitting that she would play a brilliant astronomer in Contact, the film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s bestselling novel. Dr. Eleanor Arroway discovers a signal emanating from the Vega star, and in her quest to determine what it means, finds herself in an existential crisis that leads her to question all she’s ever believed about the universe and our place in it. Like a number of Foster’s characters from her previous films, Ellie is resolute in her dogged pursuit of the truth, but she also carries a lifetime of anguish from the death of her father when she was a child. In Contact, Ellie ultimately finds herself unable to call upon scientific data to support what she’s experienced, bringing the insecurities of her earliest years to the surface. In the film’s powerful finale, as Ellie testifies before a congressional committee investigating the apparent failure of her mission to discover extraterrestrial life, Foster’s mastery of a character besieged by the collision of her mind and her heart is exquisite.

Meg in Panic Room (2002)

Foster reshaped her image and went full-on action hero in Panic Room, the David Fincher thriller about a woman terrorized by a trio of thieves who break into their home. Foster plays Meg Altman, a recent divorcee who buys a sprawling Manhattan brownstone for her and her 12-year-old diabetic daughter (Kristen Stewart). The home comes with a bonus – a “panic room” installed by the reclusive previous owner. Little does Meg know the panic room also contains a stash of $3 million that someone else is after. When the robbers enter the house to get the money, Meg and her daughter lock themselves in the panic room and the standoff begins. Of course, the daughter’s life-saving insulin is outside the panic room, so Meg must find a way to outwit the bandits, retrieve the medication, and ultimately vanquish the bad guys. Foster uses her brains and brawn in this dogfight, and it’s the first time audiences got to see Foster as a true female superhero, kicking buttt with the best of them.


Madeleine in Inside Man (2006)

Foster as a high-powered, manipulative, menacing genius – what could be more fun? As Madeleine White in Inside Man, Foster is a formidable “fixer” for influential clients who find themselves in sticky situations. When criminal mastermind Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) attempts the heist of a Manhattan bank, a hostage situation ensues, alarming the bank’s CEO Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), who has some incriminating objects hidden in his safe deposit box there. Case summons White to negotiate with Russell and secure the contents of the box. Foster is pure icy coolness as White playfully banters with Owen’s Russell to convince him to give her what she wants, all the while trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the cop (Denzel Washington) overseeing the hostage situation.

Nancy in The Mauritanian (2021)

Based on Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s harrowing memoir, “Guantánamo Diary,” The Mauritanian tells the true story of a young man imprisoned without charges for 14 years by the U.S. government for his alleged involvement in the September 11 attacks. Foster plays real life attorney Nancy Hollander, who takes on Slahi’s case as part of her law firm’s pro bono program. This is Foster as she hasn’t been seen before – silver-haired, more mature, a bit weary, and somewhat jaded. While Hollander starts out not necessarily convinced of her client’s innocence, she nonetheless is committed to following the law. As she learns more about Slahi and the circumstances of his detainment, including psychological, physical, and sexual torture, securing his release becomes Hollander’s sole focus. This is perhaps Foster’s most restrained performance, and she fully inhabits Hollander’s complete dedication to righting the wrongs visited upon her client. Foster won a much-deserved Golden Globe for her determined performance in this important film.


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