Few child actors have entered the industry with the ability to effortlessly balance roles as strikingly different as Jodie Foster. In the same year, she starred in Disney’s beloved body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, played a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s gritty drama Taxi Driver, and took on the role of speakeasy singer Tallulah in Bugsy Malone. Foster had been appearing in television shows and films since the late 1960s—before even reaching double digits—but it was these roles that brought her widespread recognition, something she has maintained ever since.
Proving from an early age that she had the kind of talent that most people discover when they’re considerably older, Foster’s performances only continued to impress critics throughout the 1980s, and with 1988’s The Accused, she earned her first Oscar for ‘Best Actress’. She had previously been nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ when she was 13 for Taxi Driver, but now she finally had a golden statuette to her name – and this wouldn’t be her only win. A few years later, she picked up another ‘Best Actress’ Oscar when she starred in The Silence of the Lambs, one of her most popular roles.
The film, directed by Jonathan Demme, was one of the biggest films of 1991, and Foster’s portrayal of Clarice Starling, a trainee FBI agent who meets Anthony Hopkins’ terrifying Hannibal Lecter, was widely praised by viewers. It further cemented her place in the industry as an impressive star, and she has since gone on to find further acclaim, picking up two more Oscar nominations and even trying her hand at directing with movies like Little Man Tate, The Beaver, and Money Monster.
Despite the success she has received over the years, Foster still has some regrets that she hasn’t been able to shake. In an interview with CBS, the star revealed, “I wish that I could live my life without knowing what it was to be famous. It’s the one…regret that I have. It definitely changes how I see the world.”
Foster has lived in the spotlight her whole life, and it has certainly affected her experience of growing up. In 1980, her fame resulted in a direct threat to her safety when she was stalked by John Hinckley Jr, a crazed fan who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan so that she might notice him. Drawing parallels to her film Taxi Driver, in which Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle contemplates killing a presidential candidate, the event seriously affected the young Foster.
“It makes you completely different being in the public your whole life,” Foster added. “You decide to be an actor at 22 or 23 years old. Usually the personality is, ‘I want you to notice me….And I want to sit in the front row, and I want pictures to be taken of me, and I want people to talk about how I look. But when you’ve been in the business your entire life, you safeguard your life. People always try to take it away from you. You don’t live as much because you are a little more guarded about life.”
Unfortunately for Foster – who was also stalked by another man at Yale who reportedly wanted to murder her – fame has directly resulted in some rather abnormal experiences that she’d rather not have had to deal with. The incidents that Foster has experienced represent the scariest aspects of fame, but she has refused to let these men stop her from pursuing a career as an actor, something at which she has excelled.
