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Jodie Foster: From Commercials to Movies

© Dexter Wolfe

At the age of three she was the Coppertone suntan lotion tike, by the age of eight she had accomplished over forty television commercials.

At ten, she made the big screen for the Disney flick Napoleon and Samantha (1972).

By fourteen she won her first Oscar nomination for playing a twelve year old prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s, Taxi Driver (1976). From a child star to a Hollywood power movie broker, she commands attention.

Alicia Christian Foster (Jodie), alias Load to her family, was born November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles with blue eyes and she has achieved the status of a magna cum laude graduate in English Literature from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Raised by her mother, Evelyn, with her two older sisters and an older brother, her parents divorced when she was just a few months old. Constantly working Jodie has appeared in some well-known shows like, Gunsmoke (1971), Bonanza (1972), Ironside (1967) and Daniel Boone (1973). Even in the more recent shows like The X-Files (1993) and Frasier (1993).

Jodie stared in such unforgettable series as World of Disney Anthology Menace On The Mountain. One of her popular movies was Candleshoe (1977) where as an orphan character searches for a hidden family treasure with David Niven, Tom Sawyer (1973) as Becky Thatcher, Bugsy Malone (1976), Freaky Friday (1977) and Foxes (1980).

Her mother was her manager till she was twenty, securing her TV series roles like Mayberry RFD, My Three Sons, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and even guest appearance on The Partridge Family (1970) and Kung Fu. Her leading role was in 1972 in Napoleon & Samantha, in which she was actually mauled by a real lion.

Jodie has also discovered the dark side with stalking fans. Her publicity, an entirely circumstantial connection, to the psychotically obsessed John Hinckley Jr. and his desire to impress her by attempting to assassinate Ronald Reagan.

Her brother, Buddy Foster, wrote a non-approved biography entitled “Foster Child” in which he describes the family not in a good light. He gained millions on book sales but said it wasn’t for money but revenge.

Such talent has not gone unrewarded with two Academy Awards, a second honorary degree from Yale for the advancement of women in the movies, a producer and director. Jodie’s movies span riveting characters in such movies as Carny (1980), Stealing Home (1988),The Accused (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Little Man Tate (1991), Backtrack (1991), Sommersby (1993) with Richard Gere, Nell (1994), Maverick (1994) Contact (1997).

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