15 of 2024 Emmy Award winner Jodie Foster’s lesser-known movies

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies 2024 Emmy Award Win
VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

You’ve undoubtedly seen Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs, viewed her other notable films such as Taxi Driver and Panic Room, and perhaps caught her recently in the film Nyad and the TV series True Detective: Night Country. For the latter, Sunday night, she won her first Emmy Award — for Outstanding Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. But the lesbian actress and director has been in show business since childhood, and she has an extensive filmography. This year, not only has she won the Emmy, but she was nominated for an Academy Award for Nyad, and during April’s TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles, she put her handprints and footprints in cement for display at the famed Chinese Theatre, and she appeared at a screening of The Silence of the Lambs. So it’s an appropriate time to take a look at some of her lesser-known roles, most of them the strong, complex women we’ve come to expect her to personify.

Tom Sawyer (1973)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Tom Sawyer

United Artists via IMDB

After spending much of her childhood in TV guest shots, Foster had one of her first big-screen roles in this musical version of Mark Twain’s classic story, playing Becky Thatcher, Tom’s girlfriend of sorts. She was just 10 years old. She shared the screen with Johnny Whitaker (pictured; Baby Boomers will remember him from Family Affair) as Tom, Jeff East as Huckleberry Finn, and Celeste Holm as Aunt Polly. The screenplay and songs were by brothers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, known for scoring many a Disney film.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. via IMBD

Before she worked for Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver, Foster had a role in his feminist comedy-drama about a widow (Ellen Burstyn) out to make a new life in Tucson. (Yes, Scorsese has made some movies that don’t center on criminals.) Foster is Audrey, a deliciously sardonic young girl who befriends Alice’s son, Tommy (Alfred Lutter, pictured), and introduces him to the joys of shoplifting and cheap wine.

Freaky Friday (1976)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Freaky Friday
Walt Disney Pictures via IMBD

Foster had a big hit with Freaky Friday, playing teen Annabel Andrews, whose brain switches bodies with her mother’s (Barbara Harris) on one crazy day. Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard and a Broadway composer in her own right, adapted her novel for the screen. The film was remade with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in 2003.

Candleshoe (1977)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Candleshoe
Walt Disney Pictures via IMBD

In Candleshoe, Foster is Casey, an orphan recruited by a small-time crook (Leo McKern) to aid in his scheme to find hidden treasure in a British manor house. But she and her comrades end up befriending the lady of the house (Helen Hayes), who’s actually broke. The always reliable David Niven is the lady’s butler.

Foxes (1980)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Foxes
MGM Studios

Foxes has a nearly grown-up Foster as one of four teenage friends having fast times in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley. She’s Jeanie, the one who tries to hold them together and keep them stable. Cherie Currie of Runaways fame is Annie, the one with the most problems. Directed by Adrian Lyne, later known for Flashdance, 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Unfaithful.

Carny (1980)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Carny
United Artists

Carny casts Foster as Donna, who’s tired of her waitress job and joins a couple of carnival hustlers in their nomadic life. The chief carnies are played by Gary Busey and the musician Robbie Robertson of the great rock group the Band; Robertson also co-wrote the movie. There’s a deep supporting cast that includes Elisha Cook Jr., who classic movie fans will know from The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.

The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Hotel New Hampshire
Orion Pictures via IMBD

The Hotel New Hampshire is based on John Irving’s novel about a New England family who relocate to Vienna to manage a run-down hotel. It’s a typically quirky Irving tale, with Beau Bridges and out actress Lisa Banes as the parents, Foster as outspoken daughter Franny, and Rob Lowe (pictured), Seth Green, Paul McCrane, and Jennifer Dundas as her siblings. McCrane’s character, Frank, is gay, something that’s treated matter-of-factly, and Lowe’s John, who narrates the story, has a sexual longing for Franny. Esteemed director Tony Richardson, who was bisexual, wrote the screenplay and helmed the film; his daughter Joely (her mother is Vanessa Redgrave) appears in the movie. Wilford Brimley, Natassja Kinski, Wallace Shawn, Amanda Plummer, and Anita Morris are on hand as well.

Stealing Home (1988)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies jodie foster movie Stealing Home
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. via IMBD

Stealing Home is told in flashback, with washed-up baseball player Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon) remembering the free-spirited sweetheart of his youth, Katie Chandler (Foster), who has died by suicide. William McNamara plays the younger Billy. Blair Brown, Harold Ramis, Richard Jenkins, and Helen Hunt appear in support.

Five Corners (1987)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies jodie foster movie Five Corners
Cineplex Odeon Films via MUBI

Five Corners, set in the Bronx in 1964, has John Turturro as ex-con Heinz, who’s still obsessed with Linda (Foster), the woman he once tried to rape. Tim Robbins is Harry, Linda’s protector. The script is by John Patrick Shanley, pre-Moonstruck.

Catchfire a.k.a. Backtrack (1990)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Catchfire aka Backtrack
Vestron Pictures

In Catchfire, later released in a director’s cut as Backtrack, Foster is Anne Benton, who witnesses a mob assassination and therefore becomes a target herself. To escape a mob hit, she moves from city to city and changes identities. But Milo, the hit man assigned to kill her, falls in love with her and joins her on the run. Dennis Hopper, who also directed, plays Milo. The cast includes Turturro, Fred Ward, and old Hollywood pros Vincent Price, Dean Stockwell, and Julie Adams.

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
ThinkFilm

Foster is a straight-arrow nun working in a Catholic school in the 1970s in The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys. She seizes a comic book that has been created by two students (Kieran Culkin, pictured, and Emile Hirsch) and lampoons her and a priest at the school (Vincent D’Onofrio). The boys are soon plotting revenge.

Flightplan (2005)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Flightplan
Touchstone Pictures

Flightplan has Foster as a recently widowed aerospace engineer who’s flying from Germany to the U.S. — on a plane she designed — with her 6-year-old daughter and the body of her husband. She awakens from a nap to find her daughter has disappeared, and others on the plane claim the girl was never there. Up in the air, Foster scrambles to find out the truth. Sean Bean and Peter Sarsgaard costar.

Inside Man (2006)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Inside Man
Universal Pictures

Inside Man, directed by Spike Lee, stars Clive Owen as a robber holding hostages in a Wall Street bank, Denzel Washington (pictured) as the cop on the case, and Foster as a fixer hired by bank founder Christopher Plummer to retrieve something more valuable than money from the institution. It all turns out to have something to do with the Holocaust.

The Brave One (2008)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Brave One
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Foster goes vigilante in The Brave One, playing a New York radio host who’s suffered an attack that left her in a three-week coma and her fiancé dead. Upon recovery, she decides to go after the evildoers in the city. Directed by Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire).

The Mauritanian (2021)

list photo gallery lesser known jodie foster movies Mauritanian
STX Entertainment via TOBIS

The Mauritanian is based on the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the Mauritanian of the title, who was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks and held without charge in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 14 years. Foster plays Nancy Hollander, the attorney seeking to free him, and Tahar Rahim portrays Slahi. Benedict Cumberbatch is the military lawyer on the other side.