Recently we watched True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the popular True Detective series.
It was a much-needed return to form for the show, and in part that was because of a superb performance from Jodie Foster.
Ever since we first saw her in the Silence of the Lambs, our opinion remains that she is one of the greatest actresses of all time, if not the greatest.
We are sure growing up we must have seen one of her early childhood roles, most likely was Freaky Friday or Bugsy Malone, but we certainly didn’t recall it.
We remember after seeing Silence, wanting to see more of her performances and renting two films that she had been Oscar nominated for, Taxi Driver and The Accused, which would give her the first of her two Oscars.
Not the most comfortable films to watch an actress, who we admit we were also quite attracted to, so to see her play a child prostitute and a rape victim wasn’t easy viewing.
She certainly doesn’t seem to get much luck in some of these earlier roles, she was also a rape victim in the Hotel New Hampshire and in controlling relationships in both Catchfire (aka Back Track) and Mesmerized.
She is however also one of the reasons we got so comfortable going to see films at the cinema on our own.
In a time of the action hero, dare we say alpha male film role, selling to your friends the idea of seeing the likes of Nell and Sommersby, to name just two of her films, was never going to be easy.
We even remember racing to the bookshop when Hannibal was released by Thomas and devouring the next Clarice Starling case, only to find she would pass on the movie adaptation.
We also remember going to the betting shop to bet on Jodie to win best actress for Nell and being annoyed that she lost to Jessica Lange for Blue Sky, not saying we are bad losers but to this date, Blue Sky is a film we still haven’t watched.
In fact it is quite safe to say she has been quite prominent in all my cinema viewing life.
Mind you that might have always been likely as she did also audition to play Princess Leia for the original Star Wars.
Jodie had for a while seemed to be only taking smaller roles, as she was spending more time behind the camera directing the likes of Money Monster with George Clooney and various episodes of TV shows from Orange Is The New Black to Black Mirror.
She still turned up in front of the camera in the likes of Elysium; Hotel Artemis and The Mauritanian to keep things ticking over.
However her comeback started with Nyad, which would bring her another Oscar nomination and now True Detective, giving the show its highest rating since the first season.
Both performances were so good, it reminded us why we hold her in such high regard that it has sent us on a quest to once again revisit most of her films.
We are quietly confident at the time of writing, that she will be our most watched actress in our end of year Letterboxd stats.
It has been a mixed bag however, she can always make a bad film good, so it has hardly been a chore, especially as we confessed, we find her very easy on the eye.
Even she was unhappy with some of those roles she was being offered, to the extent thatr she was considering giving up acting, but won the role of Sarah in The Accused and hasn’t looked back.
So why not check out Instagram as we have been doing Foster Fridays by watching one of her films or check out our Letterboxd list of all our watches of her films.
For the record, these would probably be our top 5 Jodie Foster films but it often changes.
5. Flight Plan – We love this as a perfect example of how a film that really shouldn’t work is elevated into something different because of her performance, as she plays a mother whose child goes missing on a plane, yet no one believes her.
4. Contact – Jodie plays an astronomer searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life in this adaptation of the Carl Sagan book
3. Panic Room – She was the first choice for director David Fincher for The Game, but Michael Douglas didn’t agree, so it wasn’t until this claustrophobic thriller she would work with him.
2. Maverick – This film always makes us a little sad, as it is a shame, she has not done more comedy roles as she absolutely steals this movie from both Mel Gibson and James Garner.
1. The Silence of the Lambs – She is the best Clarice Starling in the best Hannibal Lecter movie, and we will not be persuaded to think otherwise.
Are you a fan of Jodie’s work, what is your favourite performance of hers?
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