Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh

Author:Boze Hadleigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books

Chapter Eight

Jodie Foster

(born 1962)

“I need to be with someone who loves me and who I can come home to every night, and that might as well be Mom.”

So said Jodie Foster once upon a time. For a long while her career was managed by her divorced mother, who started with son Buddy’s career. In 1968 he landed a plum kid role when Andy Griffith departed his eponymous TV series. The retitled Mayberry, R.F.D. starred Ken Berry, whose son was played by Buddy Foster.

Jodie sometimes tagged along on Buddy’s auditions and at one point got picked, instead, for a Coppertone suntan lotion ad. “I snuck in behind my brother—I wasn’t supposed to be there—and I kept showing them how I could make muscles. I told them my name was Alexander.”

Alicia, the future star of the family, got her nickname via her mother’s live-in girlfriend Josephine Dominguez Hill, known as Jo D. “Brandy” Foster was born Evelyn Almond. “I knew the mother slightly,” said publicist Charlie Earle. “She was hard-driving, very ambitious for her son—the son, because more roles for boys than girls—but eventually also for Jodie.

“After the husband left, Mrs. Foster became a publicist to support her family. That veered into child-acting, where a kid can support the family. Mrs. F. had expensive tastes and wanted to become the mother of a star. When it became clear that would probably be the third daughter and not the boy, Mama switched gears. Evidently the son got left out in the cold, with everything revolving around Jodie. Which explains some of what happened later.”

Jodie Foster has shed minimal light on her relationships inside and outside the family. In 1959 Lucius Fisher Foster III and Brandy separated. In 1962 she confronted him about child support. “Have sex with me and I’ll give you the money.” Result: another pregnancy. Foster left his three children and wife for good when Brandy was four months pregnant with Alicia.

On a second trip to Bangkok in 1999 this writer met a Chinese American businessman who volunteered that Jodie’s Foster’s father was allegedly “a crook.” I had no way of validating the statement. But in 2011 Lucius, then 89, was sentenced to five years in prison for a property scam—he’d used his famous daughter’s name to lure investors—that included 21 counts of grand theft and nine of contracting without a license. The judge declared Foster “dangerous” and Jodie, estranged from a father she never knew, made no comment.

Casting director Joy Todd explained, “Some child actors experience real-life soap operas at home—Jodie Foster, Brooke Shields… .That may be interesting and we may be curious, but we’ve got other things to take up our time… .Some of us ignore stage parents as far as is practical, because in the end it’s all about the actor. That individual’s talent and screen personality typically has little to do with the relatives.

“I’d even say most of the actors who become stars never really fit into their families—they always stood out, were always different.”

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