Jodie Foster

From Philosopedia

(Alicia Christian) Jodie Foster (19 November 1962 - )

Academy Award-winning actress Foster was born in Los Angeles. Her professional debut was at age 3 in a Coppertone Suntan lotion commercial. She made a series of TV appearances and movies as a child and was once mauled by a lion while making a Disney film. Her "big break" role was being cast as a pre-teen prostitute in Taxi Driver (1976).

In 1980, she graduated best of her class from the College Lycee Francais in 1980. In 1981, she was stalked by John Hinkley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in a warped paean to Taxi Driver.

In 1985, Foster graduated magna cum laude from Yale with a degree in literature. She earned two Academy Awards as best actress, for The Accused (1988) and for Silence of the Lambs (1991). Her many movies include Nell (1994), and Contact (1997), in which she memorably portrayed the atheist astronomer protagonist based on Carl Sagan's novel. The casting was apt, for in an interview with Dan McLeod, she said,

• I absolutely believe what Ellie [Arroway, the atheist astronomer in the movie Contact believes - that there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.

She confirmed this to film critic Betsy Pickle of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, who wrote,

• Like Ellie in the movie, Foster doesn’t believe in a supreme spiritual being. Although saying she respects religious belief and has studied it, “As far as in my own life, I only have questions. Just as the character says in the movie, as a scientist, I’d have to say that there is no evidence. . . ." In fact, she added, she had never believed in God nor practiced a religion: "It’s only as I got older that I really got interested in it. I didn’t have any religious background. My mother had a lot of religious background; my brothers and sisters did. But for some reason, I was the last in the family, and it was the ’60s, and it just didn’t trickle down. The only church I’d ever been into, I think, the only service that I’ve ever attended, was the cathedral of the Vatican – because you went to Rome, and you want to go in. And I think I’ve been to Notre Dame a few times because it’s really pretty.

{CA; FFRF; The Freethinker, November 1997; Dan McLeod, The Georgia Straight, July 10-17, 1997, cited by CA}