Career beginnings in a publicity photo for
Paper Moon (1974), one of her first starring roles Foster's career began with an appearance in a
Coppertone television advertisement in 1965, when she was three years old. Her other early film work includes the
Raquel Welch vehicle
Kansas City Bomber (1972), the
Western One Little Indian (1973), the
Mark Twain adaptation
Tom Sawyer (1973), and
Martin Scorsese's ''
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'' (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "
Ripple-drinking street kid".
1970s: Taxi Driver and teenage stardom Foster's mother was concerned that her daughter's career would end by the time she grew out of playing children and decided that Foster should also begin acting in films for adult audiences. After the minor supporting role in
Alice, Scorsese cast her in the role of a child prostitute in
Taxi Driver (1976). To be able to do the film, Foster had to undergo psychiatric assessment and was accompanied by a social worker on set. Her older sister Connie acted as her
stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. Foster later commented on the role, saying that she hated "the idea that everybody thinks if a kid's going to be an actress it means that she has to play
Shirley Temple or someone's little sister." During the filming, Foster developed a bond with co-star
Robert De Niro, who saw "serious potential" in her and dedicated time to rehearsing scenes with her. Foster called
Taxi Driver a life-changing experience and said it was "the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn't myself. It was the first time I realized that acting wasn't this hobby you just sort of did, but that there was actually some craft."
Taxi Driver was a critical and commercial success, and earned her a supporting actress
Academy Award nomination, as well as two
BAFTAs, a
David di Donatello and a
National Society of Film Critics award. and has been preserved in the
National Film Registry. Foster also acted in another film nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1976,
Bugsy Malone, Director
Alan Parker was impressed by her, saying that "she takes such an intelligent interest in the way the film is being made that if I had been run over by a bus I think she was probably the only person on the set able to take over as director." She gained several positive notices for her performance, with
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times writing: "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore".
Variety called her "outstanding", and
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times called her "the star of the show". Foster's two BAFTAs were awarded jointly for her performances in
Taxi Driver and
Bugsy Malone. Her third film release in 1976 was the independent drama
Echoes of a Summer, which had been filmed two years earlier.
The New York Times named Foster's performance as a terminally ill girl the film's "main strength" Foster's fourth film of 1976 was the Canadian-French thriller
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in which she starred opposite
Martin Sheen. The film combined aspects of thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town. The performance earned her a
Saturn Award. In November, Foster hosted
Saturday Night Live, becoming the youngest person to do so until
Drew Barrymore hosted at age 7 in 1982. gaining Foster a
Golden Globe nomination for her performance. As Foster grew, her mother wanted photos to reflect Foster's ability to take on adult roles, so she arranged for
Emilio Lari to do a partially nude photoshoot. The photoshoot was taken at a rented estate in Los Angeles, with Foster's mother and Lari's wife on set. Estimates of the year of the photoshoot range between 1975 and 1979, when Foster was between 13 and 16. After her breakthrough year, Foster spent nine months living in France, where she starred in
Moi, fleur bleue (1977) and recorded several songs for its soundtrack. She later said that going to college changed her thoughts about acting, which she had previously thought was an unintelligent profession. She realized that "what I really wanted to do was to act and there was nothing stupid about it." but her next project, the independent film
Five Corners (1987), was better received. A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an
Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her. The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series
Tales from the Darkside, and starred in the romantic drama
Stealing Home (1988) opposite
Mark Harmon. The film was a critical and commercial failure, with Roger Ebert "wondering if any movie could possibly be that bad". Foster's breakthrough into adult roles came with her performance as a rape survivor in
The Accused (1988). as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain." Demme's view of Foster changed during the production, and he later credited her for helping him define the character. Released in February 1991,
The Silence of the Lambs became one of the biggest hits of the year, grossing close to $273 million, with a positive critical reception. Foster received largely positive reviews and won Academy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for her portrayal of Starling;
Silence won five Academy Awards overall, becoming one of the few films to win in all main categories. In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and
homo-/
transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as
bisexual and
transgender. Much of the criticism was directed at Foster, who the critics claimed was herself a lesbian. Despite the controversy, the film is considered a modern classic: Starling and Lecter are included on the American Film Institute's top ten of
the greatest film heroes and villains, and the film is preserved in the National Film Registry. In October 1991, Foster released her first feature film as a director,
Little Man Tate, a drama about a child prodigy who struggles to come to terms with being different. The main role was played by previously unknown actor
Adam Hann-Byrd, and Foster co-starred as his working-class single mother. She had found the script in the "
slush pile" at
Orion Pictures, and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years. Every single one of them, if they weren't in the script from the beginning, they're there now." Regardless, it was a moderate box office success. Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in
Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by
Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s. She appeared in the sci-fi film
Contact (1997), and the commercially successful
Panic Room (2002). Other action films have included
Flightplan (2005) and ''
Nim's Island (2008). Elysium'' (2013) saw her opposite
Matt Damon in a dystopian thriller. According to film scholar Karen Hollinger, these later films were more "conventionally feminine" roles. Both
Sommersby and
Maverick were box office successes. Foster had founded her own production company, Egg Pictures, a subsidiary of
PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in 1992, and released its first production,
Nell, in December 1994. The film was based on
Mark Handley's play
Idioglossia, which interested Foster for its theme of "otherness", and because she "loved this idea of a woman who defies categorization, a creature who is labeled and categorized by people based on their own problems and their own prejudices and what they bring to the table." Despite mixed reviews, it was a commercial success, and earned Foster a
Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her acting performance. The second film that Foster directed and produced for Egg Pictures was
Home for the Holidays, released in late 1995. A
black comedy "set around a nightmarish
Thanksgiving", it starred
Holly Hunter and
Robert Downey Jr. The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure. and the Berlinale Camera at the
46th Berlin International Film Festival. She voiced a character in an episode of
Frasier in 1996 and in an episode of
The X-Files in early 1997. After
Nell (1994), Foster appeared in no new film releases until
Contact (1997), a science fiction film based on a novel by
Carl Sagan and directed by
Robert Zemeckis. She starred as a scientist searching for extraterrestrial life in the
SETI project. The film was a commercial success and earned Foster a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe. Foster next produced
Jane Anderson's television film
The Baby Dance (1998) for
Showtime. Its story deals with a wealthy California couple who struggle with infertility and decide to adopt from a poor family in
Louisiana. It was a moderate commercial success, but received mixed to negative reviews. Ebert panned the film, saying the role required Foster "to play beneath [her] intelligence" and
The New York Times called it a "misstep" for her and accused her of only being "interested ... in sanctifying herself as an old-fashioned heroine than in taking on dramatically risky roles".
2000s: Career setbacks and resurgence in thrillers in 2007 Foster's first project of the new decade was
Keith Gordon's film
Waking the Dead (2000), which she produced. She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in
Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to
Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project,
Flora Plum. It was to focus on a 1930s circus and star
Claire Danes and
Russell Crowe, but had to be shelved after Crowe was injured on set and could not complete filming on schedule; Foster unsuccessfully attempted to revive the project several times in the following years. Controversially, she also expressed interest in directing and starring in a biographical film of
Nazi film director
Leni Riefenstahl, who did not like the idea. In addition to these setbacks, Foster shut down Egg Pictures in 2001, saying that producing was "just a really thankless, bad job". After the cancellation of
Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller
Panic Room after its intended star,
Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on the set of
Moulin Rouge!. Before filming resumed, Foster was given only a week to prepare for the role of a woman who hides in a
panic room with her daughter when burglars invade their home. It grossed over $30 million on its North American opening weekend in March 2002, becoming the most successful film opening of Foster's career . In addition to being a box office success, the film also received largely positive reviews. After a minor appearance in the French period drama
A Very Long Engagement (2004), Foster starred in three more thrillers. The first was
Flightplan (2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter vanishes during an overnight flight. It became a global box office success, but received mixed reviews. It was followed by
Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful
Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on
Wall Street, which co-starred
Denzel Washington and
Clive Owen. The third thriller,
The Brave One (2007), prompted some comparisons to
Taxi Driver, as Foster played a New Yorker who becomes a vigilante after her fiancé is murdered. It was not a success, but earned Foster her sixth Golden Globe nomination. Her last film role of the decade was in the children's adventure film ''
Nim's Island (2008), in which she portrayed an agoraphobic writer opposite Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. It was the first comedy in which she had starred since Maverick
(1994), and was a commercial success but a critical failure. In 2009, she provided the voice for Maggie in a tetralogy episode of The Simpsons'' titled "
Four Great Women and a Manicure".
2010s: Focus on directing at the premiere of
The Beaver at the
2011 Cannes Film Festival In the 2010s, Foster focused on directing and took fewer acting roles. In February 2011, she hosted the
36th César Awards in France, and the next month released her third feature film direction,
The Beaver (2011), about a depressed man who develops an alternative personality based on a beaver hand puppet. It starred
Maverick co-star Mel Gibson and featured herself,
Anton Yelchin and
Jennifer Lawrence in supporting roles as his family. Foster called its production "probably the biggest struggle of my professional career", partly due to the film's heavy subject matter but also due to the controversy that Gibson generated when he was accused of
domestic violence and making
antisemitic, racist, and
sexist statements. The film received mixed reviews, and failed at the box office, largely due to this controversy. In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an
ensemble cast with
John C. Reilly,
Kate Winslet and
Christoph Waltz in
Roman Polanski's comedy
Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos. It premiered to mainly positive reviews and earned Foster a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress. In 2013, Foster received the honorary
Cecil B. DeMille Award at the
70th Golden Globe Awards. Her next film role was
Secretary of Defense Delacourt opposite
Matt Damon in the
dystopian film
Elysium (2013), which was a box office success. She also returned to television directing for the first time since the 1980s, directing the episodes "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013) and "Thirsty Bird" (2014) for
Orange Is the New Black, and the episode "Chapter 22" (2014) for
House of Cards. "Lesbian Request Denied" brought her a
Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and the two 2014 episodes earned her two nominations for a
Directors Guild of America Award. She also narrated the episode "Women in Space" (2014) for
Makers: Women Who Make America, a
PBS documentary series about women's struggle for equal rights in the United States. In 2015, Foster received the
Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award at the
Athena Film Festival. The fourth film Foster directed, the hostage drama
Money Monster, premiered out-of-competition at the
Cannes Film Festival in May 2016. It starred
George Clooney and
Julia Roberts, and despite mixed reviews, was a moderate commercial success. The next year, Foster continued her work in television by directing an episode, "
Arkangel", for the British sci-fi anthology series
Black Mirror (2011–). As the decade drew to a close, Foster continued to mix acting with directing. She starred together with
Sterling Brown in the dystopian film
Hotel Artemis (2018). Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse Jean Thomas, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices.
Mick LaSalle of the
San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "not enough can be said about the performance of Foster in this film. She brings to the role a quality of having seen the absolute worst in people, but also the suggestion that, as a result, she accepts them on their own terms and knows how to handle any situation." Rick Bentley from
Tampa Bay Times declared Foster's performance one of her "best and most memorable." The same year, Foster co-produced and narrated
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), a documentary on one of the first female film directors. in April 2024 during the ceremony in which she
immortalized her hands and footprints 2020s: Return to acting Foster directed the finale of the 2020 science fiction drama
Tales from the Loop. Her next project was the legal drama
The Mauritanian (2021), in which she starred as the lawyer of a prisoner (
Tahar Rahim) at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Foster won a
Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her performance. At the
2021 Cannes Film Festival, Foster received the
Honorary Palme d'Or for lifetime achievement. In 2023, Foster appeared in the Netflix biopic
Nyad as
Bonnie Stoll. Her performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. On April 19th, 2024, she
immortalized her hand and footprints in wet cement at
Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California. Also in 2024, she starred in the
fourth season of
True Detective, subtitled
Night Country, which won her a
Primetime Emmy Award, and was an
executive producer on
Alok, a short film directed by her wife
Alexandra Hedison. She starred in the 2025 French-language psychological mystery,
Vie privée (A Private Life), her first French-speaking lead role, for which she received critical acclaim. ==Personal life==