Facts
Initially managed by her divorced mother Brandy,
the young Foster was the family's
principal breadwinner. She gradually took control
of her own career, meticulously shaping
her development through a careful
selection of projects and expert
tailoring of her public image. Her rise from child
star to Oscar-winning actor to feature
film director appears unprecedented and
her added status as a producer has made her
one of Hollywood's exceedingly few female talents to achieve on such a high level in so many areas.
Foster began in commercials,
most notably baring her buns at age
three in a classic ad for Coppertone
suntanning products. She appeared
as a regular and in guest shots in
series TV and made several features
for Disney before leaving
an indelible impression with her
controversial performance in Taxi Driver (1976), as the teenage prostitute who inspires
Robert De Niro's
deranged personal crusade. Foster
followed that Oscar-nominated performance with
appearances in several features
including the uneven gangster
musical spoof Bugsy Malone (1976)
playing Miss Tallulah,
a bawdy speakeasy queen;
The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane
(1977) in the title role of a
young murderer; and Carny (1980) as a
teen runaway who joins up with a couple of carnival hustlers.
Even with her burgeoning career, Foster
remained an excellent student, graduating
from the Los Angeles Lycee Francais in
1980 as class valedictorian and going
on to study literature at Yale. She
survived a spate of unwanted publicity
surrounding John Hinckley, Jr.'s
assassination attempt on President Reagan
in 1981, which he claimed was done to
impress Foster. While studying
at Yale, she squeezed in appearances
in films and TV, most notably as a
member of an unconventional family
in the film The Hotel New Hampshire (1984),
that provided a bridge to impressive adult
acting in films like the moody
and potent Five Corners (1987).
Foster finally consolidated her
reputation with Oscar-winning portrayals of
a rape victim in The Accused (1988)
and a rookie FBI agent in Jonathan Demme's
psychological thriller, The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
For her directorial debut Little Man Tate (1991),
Foster chose a subject close
to home--a child prodigy who is
caught in a tug-of-war between his
working-class mother (played
by Foster)
and his teacher (Dianne Wiest).
In 1992, Foster formed a three-year production
deal with Polygram Filmed Entertainment,
in which they were committed to financing
three films (under her Egg Pictures banner)
in the $25 million range and three in
the $10 to $15 million, plus an extra
$10 million in print and promotion. One
proviso was that Foster could choose whether to
act in, direct or simply produce these films,
gaining rare control and flexibility
for an actor and a woman in Hollywood.
Foster's acting work during this time
was generally in lighter fare--a turn
as a prostitute in Woody Allen's
Shadows and Fog (1992), starring roles in
the costume drama Sommersby
(1992) opposite Richard Gere and
opposite Mel Gibson
in the Western spoof Maverick (1994), her first comedy in
over a decade.
In her first Egg Pictures effort, Foster
turned in a luminous performance in Nell
(1994) as a backwoods hermit who speaks
in an invented tongue. Once
again Foster walked away with an
Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Foster's second
directorial effort (in which she did not appear)
was the ensemble comedy Home for the Holidays
(1995) about a recently fired woman who
returns to her childhood home to
celebrate Thanksgiving with her
eccentric family. The film received mixed critical
reviews, but Foster's sure
handling of the actors (including
Holly Hunter,
Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr) was cited.
She returned to acting to tackle the role of a
scientist who receives signals that may
be from space aliens in
Contact (1997),
a high-minded, reality-rooted sci-fi
tale conceived by Carl Sagan
and directed by Robert Zemeckis, and one
which benefitted greatly from Foster's
ability to project intelligence on
the big screen.
Next was an unconventional
choice: Anna and the King (1999), a non-musical version of
the same true life story that inspired the
fabled stage and film production The King and I.
The film cast Foster as widowed
British schoolteacher Anna Leonowens, who engages
in a romance with the King of Siam (Chow Yun-Fat)
in the 1860s. Well-acted and lavishly produced,
the film nevertheless did not prove to
be a particular triumph for Foster.
She next appeared in a supporting role as
the univerally despised Catholic school
instructor Sister Assumpta
in the clever indie The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002).
Foster continued to pick her
projects judiciously, turning out
only a small number of films in the
early 2000s (in between, the actress
labored to launch her third
directorial project, Flora Plum, but the film was derailed
by various factors, including an arm injury
to actor Russell Crowe, who was to play
a circus aerialist). In Panic Room
(2002) she teamed with stylish
director David Fincher for a taught, claustrophic
tale of a woman and her young daughter who hole up
in their home's high tech panic room during
an apparent home invansion.
Fincher's cinematic razzle-dazzle and
Foster's always believeable version of
an "action heroine" combined to make for a
well-crafted, entertaining thriller.
Interestingly, her next project had similar thematic tones and an equally contained environment: Flightplan (2005) again cast Foster
as an aeronautics engineer and a fiercely protective mother, this time of a six-year-old daughter who vanishes during an airplane flight. When Foster desperately tries to find her child, the airline crew insists the girl was apparently never one of the passengers. The film flies intensely over-the-top, and though Foster's performance had all her usual earnest sincerity and intensity, this film is a candidate for the worst film ever. Yes, it may have done well at the US box office and Foster may have earned $13 million dollars, but it is total crap and not worth the price of a cinema ticket. It's the kind of movie you watch and after feel cheated of nearly 2 hours of your life.
In the long run it remains to be seen whether such a Hollywood made by numbers flick sold on Foster's name alone will have an adverse impact on her career.
