Foster began her professional career as a child model and later gained recognition as a teen idol through various Disney films, including Napoleon and Samantha (1972), Freaky Friday (1976), and Candleshoe (1977).

After attending Yale University, Foster transitioned into mature leading roles and won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for playing a rape victim in The Accused (1988) and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Her other notable films include Sommersby (1993), Maverick (1994), Contact (1997), Anna and the King (1999), Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006), The Brave One (2007), Nim's Island (2008), Carnage (2011), Elysium (2013), The Mauritanian (2021), and Nyad (2023).

Foster has also received Primetime Emmy nominations for producing The Baby Dance (1998) and for directing the Orange Is the New Black episode "Lesbian Request Denied" (2013).

[22] Her other early film work includes the Raquel Welch vehicle Kansas City Bomber (1972), the Western One Little Indian (1973), the Mark Twain adaptation Tom Sawyer (1973), and Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which she appeared in a supporting role as a "Ripple-drinking street kid".

"[9] Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where Foster impressed journalists when she acted as a French interpreter at the press conference.

"[37] She gained several positive notices for her performance, with Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times writing: "at thirteen she was already getting the roles that grown-up actresses complained weren't being written for women anymore".

[44][45] The film combined aspects of thriller and horror genres, and showed Foster as a mysterious young girl living on her own in a small town.

[46][47][35] She played a tomboy teen who accidentally changes bodies with her mother, and she later said the film marked a "transitional period" when she began to grow out of child roles.

[13] These were O'Hara's Wife (1982), the television film Svengali (1983), the John Irving adaptation The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), The Blood of Others (1984), and the period drama Mesmerized (1986), which she also co-produced.

A moderate critical success, it earned Foster an Independent Spirit Award for her performance as a woman whose sexual assaulter returns to stalk her.

[63][20](p 73–74)[64] The following year, Foster made her debut as a director with the episode "Do Not Open This Box" for the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside,[65] and starred in the romantic drama Stealing Home (1988) opposite Mark Harmon.

[61][60][20](p 73–74) Based on the real criminal case involving Cheryl Araujo, the film focuses on the aftermath of a gang rape and its survivor's fight for justice in the face of victim blaming.

[58] She had to audition twice for the role and was cast only after several more established actors turned it down, as the film's producers were wary of her due to her previous failures and because she was still remembered as a "chubby teenager".

[69] She had read the novel it was based on after its publication in 1988 and had attempted to purchase its film rights,[70] as it featured "a real female heroine" and its plot was not "about steroids and brawn, [but] about using your mind and using your insufficiencies to combat the villain.

In contrast, some reviewers criticized the film as misogynist for its focus on brutal murders of women, and homo-/transphobic due to its portrayal of "Buffalo Bill" as bisexual and transgender.

She had found the script in the "slush pile" at Orion Pictures,[79] and explained that for her debut film she "wanted a piece that was not autobiographical, but that had to do with the 10 philosophies I've accumulated in the past 25 years.

[82] Foster's final film appearance of the year came in a small role as a sex worker in Shadows and Fog (1991), directed by Woody Allen, with whom she had wanted to collaborate since the 1970s.

[13] Foster next starred in the period film Sommersby (1993), portraying a woman who begins to suspect that her husband (Richard Gere) who returns home from the Civil War is an impostor.

[87][20](p 74)[a] It was directed by Michael Apted and starred Foster in the titular role as a woman who grew up isolated in the Appalachian Mountains and speaks her own invented language.

A black comedy "set around a nightmarish Thanksgiving", it starred Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr.[3][92] The film received a mixed critical response and was a commercial failure.

[110] She declined to reprise her role as Clarice Starling in Hannibal (2001), with the part going instead to Julianne Moore, and concentrated on a new directorial project, Flora Plum.

[116] After the cancellation of Flora Plum, Foster took on the main role in David Fincher's thriller Panic Room after its intended star, Nicole Kidman, had to drop out due to an injury on set.

[124][125] It was followed by Spike Lee's critically and commercially successful Inside Man (2006), about a bank heist on Wall Street, which co-starred Denzel Washington and Clive Owen.

[142][143][144] In 2011, Foster also appeared as part of an ensemble cast with John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz in Roman Polanski's comedy Carnage, in which the attempts of middle-class parents to settle an incident between their sons descends into chaos.

Although the film was a commercial and critical disappointment, Foster's performance as Nurse Jean Thomas, who runs a hospital for criminals, received positive notices.

[181] During her freshman year at Yale in 1980–81, Foster was stalked by John Hinckley Jr., who had developed an obsession with her after watching Taxi Driver multiple times.

[182][183] On March 30, 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate United States president Ronald Reagan, wounding him and three other people, claiming that his motive was to impress Foster.

[6][20](p 74) Judge Barrington D. Parker confirmed that Foster was innocent in the case and had been "unwittingly ensnared in a third party's alleged attempt to assassinate an American President".

Foster has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the following films: People magazine named her the most beautiful woman in the world in 1992,[185] and in 2003, she was voted Number 23 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time.