Jodie Foster

Born: November 19 1962
Where: Los Angeles, California, USA

The double Oscar-winner was catapulted into the limelight aged just 14 as the teenage prostitute Iris in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

But the 1976 role - for which was was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar - would come back to haunt her.

Five years later John Hinckley attempted to assassinate US President Reagan as a means of impressing Foster, with whom he had grown obsessed after watching Taxi Driver.

The resultant negative publicity made Foster (who'd been previously stalked by Hinckley) extremely sensitive to media intrusion into her life.

Born Alicia Christian Foster, her three siblings insisted on calling her Jodie and the name stuck.

Her career began at the age of two as a child model baring her bottom in TV adverts for Coppertone.

After four years of regular work in commercials (she had appeared in more than 40 adverts by the time she was eight), she made her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry RFD.

In 1970, she made her film debut in the TV movie Menace on the Mountain and was first seen on the big screen in Disney's Napoloen and Samantha.

(during she filming she was mauled by a lion which briefly carried her in its mouth before she was rescued).

By the time she was a teenager, Foster had several Hollywood pictures to her credit, including One Little Indian, Tom Sawyer, Echoes of a Summer as well as Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

In 1976, Scorsese would go on to cast her opposite Robert De Niro's tragic loner Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

(her elder sister Connie acted as her stand-in for the more explicit scenes in the movie).

The same year she also starred as good-time girl Tallulah in Alan Parker's gangster-musical-with-kids Bugsy Malone.

She also starred in the original Freaky Friday, which was successfully remade with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in 2004.

At one stage director George Lucas considered her for the role of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy but she could not get out of her contract with Disney.

In 1977 she spoke French (she was fluent by the age of 14) in Moi, Fleur Bleue and went on to star alongside David Niven in the family movie Candleshoe.

Off screen, in 1980 she graduated as the best of her class from the College Lycée Français and began to study English Literature at Yale University.

During school holidays, she managed to appear in several features, including Carny, Foxes and The Hotel New Hampshire before graduating in 1985.

Foster co-produced and starred in 1986's Mesmerised and delivered a mature performance in Mary Lambert's drama-thriller Siesta.

However, it was as a trailer trash rape victim defending her character in 1988's The Accused that Foster landed her a best actress Oscar.

Three years later she repeated the feat with her portrayal of federal agent Clarice Starling (after Michelle Pfeiffer turned it down) in The Silence of the Lambs with Anthony Hopkins.

Despite the fact that she never took acting lessons, she was the first actress to receive two Oscars before the age of thirty.

After making her directorial debut with an episode of TV's Tales from the Darkside she chanced her hand on the big screen with the accomplished Little Man Tate.

Back in front of the camera, she had a cameo in Woody Allen's Shadows and Fog and co-starred with Richard Gere in the haunting Sommersby in 1993.

Foster scored another best actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a backwoodswoman in 1994's Nell, the first film made by her own company Egg Productions.

Her appearances have subsequently been sporadic but have included Ellie Arroway in the 1997 sci-fi thriller Contact and Anna in Anna and the King, a remake of The King And I.

In 2001, she decided not to reprise the role of Clarice Starling because she thought Silence of the Lambs sequel Hannibal was too gory.

The following year she starred as a mother protecting her daughter from deadly burglars in David Fincher's The Panic Room after Nicole Kidman stepped down.

In 2004, she had a cameo in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Great War romantic drama A Very Long Engagement.

Recent work includes the airborne thriller Flightplan as a mother who loses her daughter during a flight.