Actress, director, and producer. Born Alicia Christian Foster, on November 19, 1962, in Los Angeles, California. Foster’s father, Lucian, left the family before she was born; her mother, Evelyn, supported herself and her four children by working for a film producer. Advertising executives for Coppertone suntan lotion “discovered” Foster when she tagged along with her older brother Buddy, a child actor, to one of his auditions. At age three, she became the tow-headed, bare-bottomed “Coppertone girl” in a now-famous ad campaign.
By age eight, Foster had expanded her acting repertoire to include nearly forty commercials, as well as appearances on television shows such as The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Bonanza, and The Partridge Family. By the time she was ten years old, her acting jobs were supporting the entire Foster family. Her feature film debut came in 1972 with the Disney film Napoleon and Samantha. In the next five years, she appeared in no fewer than eleven more films, bringing to each role a precocious intelligence that impressed both critics and filmmakers.

In 1976, Foster made what she has referred to as the film that changed her life--the dark, violent Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese. Foster played Iris, a twelve year-old prostitute befriended by the dangerously unbalanced taxi driver Travis Bickle, played by Robert DeNiro. The role was entirely different from any the fourteen-year-old actress had ever played before. “It was the first time anyone asked me to create a character that wasn’t myself,” Foster told The New York Times Magazine in 1991. “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.” Her performance won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Unlike many young actors, Foster, who learned to read at age three, chose not to sacrifice her education to her growing film career. After graduating in 1980 from Los Angeles Lycee Francais (where she delivered the valedictory address in perfect French), she enrolled at Yale University. In March 1981, however, Foster was dragged unwillingly into the international spotlight when John Hinckley, Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, stating as his primary motive the desire to impress the nineteen-year-old actress and Yale freshman.