The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 42 Jodie Foster

Every week through the remainder of 2014, Yahoo Movies is counting down Hollywood’s 50 very best working actors and actresses. Come back to Yahoo Movies every Thursday to see who makes the cut.

Greatest Actor Alive (No. 42): Jodie Foster

Age: 51 

Stating the Case: Alicia Christian Foster (“Jodie” is a nickname her siblings gave her that just kinda stuck) has been wowing audiences since almost the day she was born. The 3-year-old star of Coppertone commercials went on to a steady stream of TV acting gigs before landing the role of a lifetime: Iris, the female protagonist of Martin Scorsese’s classic tale of NYC vigilantism and post-Vietnam War disillusionment, "Taxi Driver" (1976). Yes, the role of a lifetime. And she was 12.

While Foster may not work as much today as she did back when she was a rising child star, she still manages to make a strong impression every time. She can do hokey romances like "Stealing Home" (1988) and hard-hitting crime dramas like "The Accused" (1988) and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) without missing a beat. She can be crazy sexy, as she demonstrated in "Carny" (1980) and Richard Donner’s crowd-pleasing western comedy, "Maverick" (1994); she can be a fierce warrior woman, as evidenced in "Panic Room" (2002) and "The Brave One" (2007); and she can be cold-as-ice authoritarian, as we saw in "Inside Man" (2006) and "Elysium" (2013).

Yes, Jodie Foster definitely casts a spell… sometimes dangerously so, as John Hinckley Jr. stalked her while she was a student at Yale University and later claimed his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 was done to impress the pretty freshman. It’s a chapter from Foster’s past that she quite understandably refuses to discuss. We don’t have any problem discussing her incredible career, though.

Breakthrough Role: Foster burst onto the scene with her astonishing performance as a 12-year-old New York City prostitute in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” Foster actually had two other films released the same year (1976), both of which also had her playing decidedly grown-up roles: "Bugsy Malone," Alan Parker’s strange gangster musical featuring an all-child cast, and "Freaky Friday," the mini-classic Disney comedy in which a mother (Barbara Harris) and daughter switch bodies.

The Best of the Best:

5. “Taxi Driver” (1976): Sure, it’s got Robert De Niro in one of his most iconic roles and Harvey Keitel as a sleazy pimp, but the real star of Scorsese’s ultra-dark New York fable is Foster as Iris, a pre-adolescent prostitute whom De Niro’s Travis Bickle is inspired to save from “all the animals that come out at night.” Foster received her first Oscar nomination for playing so well with (and sometimes better than) the big boys.

4. “Panic Room” (2002): David Fincher’s home-invasion thriller features Foster in a rare butt-kicking role as a single mom (with a pre-“Twilight” Kristen Stewart as her perfectly cast daughter) who takes on a group of burglars after they break into her New York City brownstone. Foster had nine days to prepare for the role after stepping in for Nicole Kidman, who dropped out after 18 days of filming due to a recurring knee injury suffered during production of “Moulin Rouge!” (2001).

3. "Nell" (1994): The movie itself is so-so but Foster gets high marks for her lead performance in this wild-child story about a young woman who’s forced to live in the real world and interact with other human beings for the first time after being raised in isolation in the North Carolina forest. Nell speaks in a language all her own, and Foster makes you believe every strange word of it.

2. “The Accused” (1988): Foster won her first Oscar for her devastating performance as Sarah Tobias, a working-class woman who teams up with an assistant district attorney (Kelly McGillis) to bring justice to the men who gang-raped Sarah in a dive bar while several patrons cheered them on. “The Accused” is considered to be the first Hollywood film to deal with the subject of rape in a direct — and often graphic — manner.

1. “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991): Anthony Hopkins gets most of the press (and character quotes), but it’s Foster who carries Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning thriller on her formidable young shoulders as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee on the trail of a serial killer called Buffalo Bill. And to think Demme’s first choice for the role was his “Married to the Mob” (1988) star, Michelle Pfeiffer.

The BIGGEST Hit: “The Silence of the Lambs” was not only Foster’s most critically acclaimed film but also her biggest commercial hit, earning over $130 million at the U.S. box office and over $272 million worldwide.

With Honors: Foster won Academy Awards for Best Actress for her performances in “The Accused” and “The Silence of the Lambs.” She received a Best Actress nomination for “Nell” and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for “Taxi Driver.” Foster also received Golden Globes for “The Accused” and “Lambs” and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press in 2013, for which she delivered an odd and much-debated acceptance speech.

Really Fun Fact: Foster speaks fluent French after graduating from Lycée Français de Los Angeles, a French-language prep school, in 1980. She records her own French-language dubs of her film roles and appeared in a minor role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s WWII drama, “A Very Long Engagement” (2004).

Trademark: Slightly elitist, effectively vulnerable, completely dedicated.

Best Fan Tribute: Here is a piece of Jodie Foster leaf straw art that you can buy on Etsy. It was made with the leaves of a rice plant. And what did you do today?

Most Underappreciated Achievement: One of Foster’s most stylized and amusing performances is in the little-seen indie comedy, "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" (2002). The ultra-strict matriarch of a ’70s-era southern Catholic school, Foster’s Sister Assumpta is the main nemesis — and target of severe ridicule — of two students: talented up-and-coming artist Francis (Emilie Hirsch) and charismatic rabble-rouser Tim (Kieran Culkin). The film can be uneven, but it’s a total blast to watch Foster let her hair down (or, rather, don a nun’s habit) and go completely over-the-top villainous, a precursor to the more underplayed antagonists she would play in “Inside Man” (2006) and “Elysium” (2013).

Catchphrase:

Nobody’s Perfect: Foster’s had a pretty strong career thanks to being notoriously picky about her projects, but one notable misfire is "Flightplan" (2005), a lame by-the-numbers thriller with an even lamer twist. She plays a U.S. aircraft engineer whose daughter disappears from a plane en route from Berlin to New York, a scenario that forces her into a frustratingly one-note performance as she tries to prove her sanity to the crew (apparently her daughter was never checked in as a passenger in the first place) while simultaneously trying to solve the mystery. Blah.

Moonlighting: Foster has directed three feature films: "Little Man Tate" (1991), "Home for the Holidays" (1995), and "The Beaver" (2011). Foster also recently directed episodes of “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” both original Netflix series.

And for Her Next Acts: Foster is currently attached to two directing projects: “Money Monster,” a hostage drama about a TV personality whose insider trading tips have made him a Wall Street guru; and “Angie’s Body,” a “Sopranos”-like mob series for Showtime.

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 50 Brad Pitt]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 49 Sigourney Weaver]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 48 Joaquin Phoenix]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 47 Paul Giamatti]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 46 Forest Whitaker]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 45 Matthew McConaughey]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 44: Viola Davis]

[The 50 Greatest Actors Alive: No. 43: Michael Douglas]

What qualifies actors for a slot on Yahoo Movies’ running list of the 50 Greatest Actors Alive? First, we limited the pool to actors who are still currently working. Other factors taken into consideration: Pure skill in the craft; their ability to disappear underneath the skin of the characters they portray; versatility and the range of their roles; ratio of strong performances to weak ones; quality of films acted in; quality of recent work; awards and accolades from peers.