Foster was so affected by Hinckley’s actions and the subsequent media frenzy that she published an article in Esquire plaintively entitled “Why Me?” and refused to speak publicly about the incident any further.

Foster graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 1985 with a B.A. in Literature. She made a number of films during and in the few years after college, but none attracted as much attention or won her as much acclaim as Taxi Driver. In 1988, however, Foster finally gained respect as an adult actress--along with an Academy Award--for her portrayal of Sarah Tobias, the working-class victim of a brutal gang rape in The Accused. Her next great performance came three years later in the haunting thriller, The Silence of the Lambs. With darkened hair and a West Virginia twang, Foster played fledgling FBI agent Clarice Starling opposite the mesmerizing Anthony Hopkins as psychologist-cum-serial-killer Hannibal Lecter. At the 1991 Academy Awards, the film won Best Picture, Best Director (Jonathan Demme), Best Actor and Best Actress.

At age twenty-nine, with two Best Actress Oscars and nearly thirty film roles under her belt, Foster had already turned her attention to other aspects of the movie business. Her directorial debut came in 1991 with Little Man Tate, a moderately well-received film about a child prodigy and his protective single mother (played by Foster). In 1992, Polygram Filmed Entertaiment committed to finance three films for Foster’s production company, Egg Pictures. Foster produced and starred in the first of those films, 1994’s Nell; her performance as a woman who lives in the woods and speaks in her own invented language earned her a fourth Oscar nomination.

Over the past several years, Foster directed her second film, 1995’s comedy Home for the Holidays and delivered a Golden Globe-nominated performance as an astronomer looking for extraterrestrial life in 1997’s Contact. Egg Pictures has several pictures in development, all of which Foster has the option to produce, direct, and/or star in. In late 1999, Foster starred in Anna and the King, a remake of the classic story of widowed schoolteacher Anna Leonowens and the King of Siam made famous in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, to mixed reviews. She is set to direct and produce Disney’s Flora Plum, starring Russell Crowe and Claire Danes, but turned down the opportunity to reteam with Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, the much-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. She also stepped in for Nicole Kidman in the upcoming thriller The Panic Room.

With her unconventional beauty and fierce intelligence, Foster has emerged as one of America’s most well-respected actors and filmmakers.