After nearly six decades in Hollywood, actress and director Jodie Foster is still blowing television and film audiences away with her steely and intuitive performances.
The two-time Academy Award winner was basically born into the entertainment business. She grabbed her first role at just three years old and could hold her own on screen with acclaimed actor Robert DeNiro by the time she was 14 years old.
Now, Foster will be back on television screens in her first starring role since 1975! She will play the stubborn and critical Detective Liz Danvers in the upcoming fourth season of "True Detective."
Creator Nic Pizzolatto developed the anthology series, with each season following a different set of detectives trying to solve an impossible or terrifying case.
This season, the gritty crime drama travels to Alaska, where six men suddenly vanish without a trace the night before the city is plunged into its annual period of darkness 24 hours a day. Without any leads, Foster's character must work with Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) to uncover their town's haunted secrets.
"True Detective: Night Country" will premiere on HBO in January 2024.
Though Foster has been a near-constant in Hollywood - either in front of or behind the camera - she has managed to keep her personal life away from the public.
But in more recent years, she's allowed a little bit of her happiness and joy to shine through to her fans. Foster announced in April 2014 that she married photographer and former actress Alexandra Hedison.
But it was a long journey for Foster to open up and find love. Here's what we know about Foster and Hedison's decade-long relationship:
Jodie Foster Focuses on Promoting Her Work Not Personal Life
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Being in the spotlight for as long as Foster has, you learn to keep things close to your chest.
The "Silence of the Lambs" (1991) star became an expert at sidestepping questions about her love life from a young age.
There's an interview clip from the 1970s when Foster was just a teenager that found new life in recent years since the actress has become more open about her sexuality. She's asked in the interview "what kind of fellas" she likes. In response, Foster raises her eyebrows and makes a sort of half-smirk and half-grimace, which has since been dubbed by the public as her "gay silence."
She then gracefully avoided answering the question too directly, which she continued to do in the decades that followed.
Foster declined to disclose her sexuality for years. In the 1990s, several tabloids began to openly speculate that the actress was a "closeted lesbian." Instead of responding to the rumors, Foster chose to focus on her acting and let her work shine for itself.
Years later, Foster famously delivered a "coming out" speech when accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2013 Golden Globes. She admitted she was...single.
"While I'm here being all confessional, I guess I just have just a sudden urge to say something that I've never really been able to air in public," Foster said. "[It's] a declaration that I'm a little nervous about - but maybe not quite as nervous as my publicist right now. I'm just going to put it out there - loud and proud. I am single."
This, of course, was Foster poking fun at the fact that her love life had been somewhat of an open secret in recent years. She said she would not make a big speech because she had already come out to those closest to her when she was a young girl. And while she never actually used the word "gay," "lesbian," or even "queer," many consider this the moment that Foster publicly, officially, came out.
The "Taxi Driver" (1976) star admitted during the speech that being in the spotlight for more than five decades has made her a very private person.
"If you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you too would value privacy above all else," she said.
And that may be the reason why the public didn't even know Foster was engaged when she announced, through her publicist, that she married Hedison less than a year after her famous Golden Globes speech.
Who is Alexandra Hedison?
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The Hollywood Reporter says Foster and Hedison started dating in the summer of 2013. Rumors started to fly about their budding love when the two were seen together at a technology seminar at Fox Studios in Los Angeles. A few days later, they were spotted again at dinner with friends.
A source told E! News at the time that the relationship is "pretty serious. They're totally in love."
Hedison's photography work lives in public and private collections around the world, as well as in galleries and museums. She also appeared alongside Debra Messing on the sci-fi series Prey in the late 1990s and starred in Showtime's The L Word for three seasons. But she may be most known in the public sphere for dating former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in the early 2000s.
Foster and Hedison married in a private ceremony in April 2014 after never publicly announcing their engagement. And almost nothing else is known about their nuptials.
The pair must be happily in love because they've been married for a decade. But Foster and Hedison are almost never seen in public or walk red carpets together.
However, in 2021, the couple made a rare public appearance together when Foster accepted the prestigious Honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The two shared a celebratory kiss after the actress was given the honor.
Later that year, Foster was also seen happily snuggled on her couch with Hedison - both in silk pajamas - during the virtual Golden Globes Award ceremony. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic, so all the nominees were in their homes with their families and loved ones.
Foster actually won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the thriller The Mauritanian (2021). And when her win was announced, the couple shared a rare kiss on screen with their dog Ziggy in their laps.
Vogue writer Emma Specter penned at the time that the kiss captured the "wonderful mundanity of queer love."
"We were given the privilege of seeing celebrities in their natural habitats, surrounded by their loved ones without the smile-and-wave tradition of an in-person ceremony," she wrote of the ceremony. "In the case of Foster and her wife, that meant witnessing the sheer ordinariness of two women sitting on their couch with their dog and celebrating."
After avoiding revealing who she was in public for decades, fans loved to see Foster shamelessly and proudly embrace her wife in front of millions of people. And based on Hedison's adorable social media posts about Foster, we're sure their love will last.
