Jodie Foster is one of the greatest actors in cinematic history. She had landed various impressive acting roles, while also moving into the world of direction and production since establishing herself in the industry, which she first did age just six. She has received two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and three BAFTAs.
We’ve used IMDb to compare her appearances which are considered the best to those which are considered to be the worst.
Best: Contact (7.4)
Robert Zemeckis is known for directing an impressive list of films, including Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, and The Polar Express. With a filmography of that caliber, it is no surprise that Contact has been pushed out of the limelight.
However, the 1997 sci-fi film starring Jodie Foster was a massive hit and had impressive space-age visuals for its time, representing extra-terrestrial life and existence outside of planet Earth with graphics beyond their time.
Worst: Kansas City Bomber (5.5)
While Kansas City Bomber was way too early for Jodie Foster to take on a leading role, the fact that this was just her second feature film role makes it an important career milestone.
Not that it was a well-received film; its reviews suggested that it was pretty much totally average. It is not unwatchable, but also it’s just completely unmemorable.
Best: A Very Long Engagement (7.6)
The title doesn’t really sound like you’re going to get a big hit of a film, but A Very Long Engagement managed to defy the expectations of its title and garner impressive reviews across the board.
The romantic war film demoted Jodie Foster to an impressively minor role considering her stature and placed her in the midst of an almost exclusively French cast.
Worst: Catchfire (5.4)
Dennis Hopper was able to attract both an impressive main cast (which included himself and Jodie Foster) and a long list of big-name cameos (including Bob Dylan) to his 1990 action thriller.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to track too much quality, and the film was a financial failure and received a poor critical response.
Best: Inside Man (7.6)
It doesn’t really sound like an exciting setting, but films centering on Wall Street almost always end up gaining a positive reception (i.e. The Wolf Of Wall Street; The Big Short).
Inside Man sits alongside those big names, giving Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster a chance to shine in two sides of a huge bank heist. It combines action deserving of a cinema screen with twists and turns that even Scorsese would be proud of.
Worst: The Blood Of Others (5.3)
Jodie Foster seems to enjoy involving herself in heavily French productions. This film was based on a French novel and is set almost exclusively in Nazi-occupied France.
Foster stars as Helene Bertrand, but while her performance was well-received, the film was viewed as rather uninspired.
Best: Taxi Driver (8.3)
Probably Jodie Foster’s most recognized role outside of the obvious was also probably her most controversial.
Scorsese’s Taxi Drivercast the incredibly young Foster as a fourteen-year-old prostitute, a role that required her to sign various documents stating that she wasn’t scarred by her experiences. Looking back now, and the role would probably be given to someone of a different age should the film have been made more recently.
Worst: O’Hara’s Wife (5.1)
Jodie Foster isn’t known for taking on too many comedic roles, but this one is an even stranger entity: it is the director’s only film. William Bartman managed to attract an impressive cast, despite having never made a film before.
It didn’t receive much of a critical response, and he obviously never made one again.
Best: The Silence Of The Lambs (8.6)
Jodie Foster is the embodiment of Clarice Starling. She might have left the role behind when Red Dragon was produced, but her starring role in The Silence Of The Lambs is a historic acting performance. The film is one of just three films to win all five of the major Academy Awards, and for good reason.
Jodie Foster won Best Actress (with Anthony Hopkins, of course, winning Best Actor). She balanced Starling’s fear and suspicion with genuine intrigue and made the character remarkably believable.
Worst: Mesmerized (4.7)
Jodie Foster starred in Mesmerized opposite John Lithgow just five years before she would go on to change cinema with her work on The Silence Of The Lambs. Despite a great leading pair, the film made no impact with any element of its existence.
