Some things you might not know about Jodie Foster: Her toenails

are always painted fire-engine red. She goes to the movies to

cry. She still writes letters to her first 1ove And she doesn't

always know where she's going. In fact, right now, Jodie Foster is

lost. A four-letter word sails from her lips like a dart, a rare blush spreads

across her cheekbones, and the actress

most noted for her calm and cool jerks her station wagon into

reverse. A pair of little red boxing gloves swings mockingly from the

rearview mirror as Foster backs away from the dead end that has taken

her totally by surprise. All this, and we haven't even left the parking garage. That Foster has lost her way

so easily is surprising, considering that she has a reputation for knowing exactly where

she's going, both in the and in her career. At thirty-two, she's arguably the most, well,

driven and focused actress in Hollywood, and her penchant for being in

control is no more evident than how she handles interviews~ There are some things she

doesn't want to talk about. One subject that is automatically off-limits: John Hinckley, Jr�

(the warped fan who became obsessed with the actress's performance in Taxi Driver and

tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981 to impress her). And she will not discuss

her much-speculated-about lovelife. But the real secret about Jodie Foster is that beneath

that icy exterior lurks a surprisingly vulnerable soul, at once uncertain and romantic.

After a few more false turns, Foster finally escapes the garage and heads

toward Los Angeles' Hancock Park, where she wants to spend this morning driving

around looking at the houses. Perhaps the preoccupation with homes has to do with

the fact that Foster is currently homeless. Sort of, anyway. She owns a house in the

San Fernando Valley, but since it's too far from her production company, she

wound up moving into a hotel. Foster isn't house hunting; cruising around the

quiet streets is like a nostalgic trip to the childhood she never had.

With its manicured lawns and family homes, the area is everything that the

more bohemian section where Foster grew up, in Hollywood, isn't. As a kid,

she used to be dropped off in Hancock Park to trick-or-treat on Halloween;

her mother also pretended that the family lived there so that: Foster, from

the age of nine to eleven, could attend cotillion, the stuffy dancing and

manners school tradition where she was taught decorum and the fox-trot.

"Now every tifilee I go to one of those Oscar thin~s, I'm the first one

on the dance floor, because it's the only time I get to us~ my incredible

ballroom;dancing skills," says Foster, looking surprisingly kidlike in red

jeans, a black top and wire-rimmed glasses, her hair wet from her shower. When

she speaks about her mother, her tone is a mixture of humor, respect and affection.

It's clear that Brandy Foster gave her daughter a lot more than dance

lessons: She gave Jodie a strong heart, an independent spirit and a firm belief

in her own talent. "When you think about what in your parenting

has allowed you to achieve excellence, if winning an Oscar is about excel-

lence, says Foster, "it's not her telling me to wear my raincoat. It was

the side of'her that encouraged me to fly. And that told me to not hesitate."

A single mom of four children, Brandy Foster did this without the

help of her husband, an Air Force pilot, who left home before Jodie was born.

And Brandy started the encouragement early. At-three years old,

Jodie bared her bottom as the Coppertone girl, and a star was born.

Thanks to Brandy's shrewd management, Jodie was able to land enough

movie parts to support her entire family over the years, literally growing

up before the public's eyes. Yet once she was old enough to

choose her own roles, Foster had to make some awkward decisions

about her mom. And judging by how difficult mother-daughter relationships

can be under normal, everyday circumstances, this transition of Brandy from

business partner to mom must have been tricky. "I always get really

careful around this line of questioning because she reads these things and

the inference is,'Yeah, when she was sixteen, she didn't need her ever

again.' And that's not true," says Foster, a protective edge to her voice.

"She has a different capacity now in my life. There was a time when I only

wanted her in the professional and I didn't want her in the personal, and

now it's just the opposite." Foster hasn't hesitated to make other tough

decisions as well. "I've walked away from enormous amounts

of money when no one would walk away from that. I went to college

when, if I wanted to have a career, it was the stupidest thing

I could have done," says Foster of her stint at Yale. "Idirected [Little Man Tate]

right when I was about to win an Academy Award, when in terms of earning power

as an actress you'll never be as high." Since then she's

continued to forge into uncharted terrain; Sornmersby was her first romantic

lead, Maverick her first comedic turn, and later this year Foster will direct

Holly Hunter in the drama Home for the Holidays. But Nell, the first offspring hatched

from her company, Egg Pictures, is her riskiest role to date. In the drama,

released nationwide in January, Foster plays a woman raised in the Ap-

palachian Mountains, completely isolated from society. The actress wails,

dances and speaks an indecipherable language with such passion that she is

literally unrecognizable. She is playing a part that's a 180-degree turn away

from the steely characters she brought to life in The Accused and The Silence

of the Lambs. "It's as bold as anyone's ever been on film," says Nell director, Michael

Apted. "It's one of those performances that if you don't get it right, it's laughable....

And she managed to give a great performance without your ever realizing

that it's Jodie Foster. She doesn't implant her fingerprints all over it."

Renie Missel, who co-produced Nell with Foster, admits it was a stretch to cast

the actress even though she is a two-time Oscar winner.

"Most agents saw someone more vulnerable in the role," says Missel. "But I've

always seen Jodie's pain in all of her films, the vulnerability in

the eyes, and I thought, If that could just come to the forefront."

The thought of getting that emotion to the forefront made Nell the

most terrifying role Foster has ever undertaken. "I was scared

to death because I play people that have four different layers,

and she doesn't have any," she says. "She doesn't have any protection."

For Foster, who's used to hiding behind a coolly cerebral mask both

on-screen and off, to show what is in her heart would make her

feel psychologically nude. Yet taking calculated chances has

paid off. Considering her A-list status

as an actress and her clout as a pro-

ducer, Foster may be the most powerful thirtysomething woman in

Hollywood. But that only exacerbates the pressure to reach all her goals

while she's still hot. "I have a very short burst of time to be as effective as

possible," Foster says. "This is a 'What was your last gig?' industry, and I'm

sure at some point i'm going to have a movie that's a complete bomb."

So far, the buzz on Nell is more Best Actress than bomb, and with that, of course, comes

another sort of pressure. Does she think she will get nominated? "I try

not to think about it because I don't want to get too weirded out" says Foster. "[The

pressure isn't] necessarily coming from everyone else, it's really coming from me.

But I thrive on that because I don't let the ball drop."

But no one, not even Foster can stay cool and focused all the

time, so she unwinds by going to the movies-- not as a professional

but as an unabashed fan. "I go to cry,"Foster says

simply. She's seen both The Piano and Fearless four times for

this very reason. Movies arent the only thing that moves Foster to tears

"Everytime I see men and women ballroom dancing, I start weeping uncontrollably,"

she says. "It's romantic, and it's about opposites

and celebrating the difference." As we drive around looking at

moldings and architectural detail in Hancock Park, Foster suddenly blurts,

"I love this song!", turns up her tape deck and

hums along with Chrissie Hynde's pop love ballad, "I'll Stand By You."

When the song ends, her hand immediately hits the rewind button.."I

want to hear my favorite song, on my favorite street, in front of my

favorite house," says Foster, with all the enthusiasm of a teenage girl.

As we pull up to a stone Tudor, her thin lips stretch into a smile.

"It looks like it has a great mahogany library with a big green

leather chair," Foster says. She cranes her neck to get

a better view. "It looks warm." The actress's ability to

fantasize about romantic ideals stretches far beyond Hancock Park: She

wears the male cologne Vetiver-- a memento, she says, of a long ago love.

"My first boyfriend wore it when I was 15," she says, breaking her own

cardinal rule never to talk about her private life. "He was French and in the

military service when I met him at a new Years'

eve party in Tahiti. I always wonder what happened to him, Every once in a while

and I look I send a letter to his parents and I look him up in

the French phone book," says Foster. She admits, sheepishly, that she

doesn't know if he gets the letters. "It's a funny

thing; it's been so many years since I knew him, but I can still

remember absolutely every way that he smiled.

But when asked if she is dating anyone these days, her

sentimental mood evaporates almost instantly. "You have to ask it,"

she says with a forced laugh, "and I get to answer that it's none

of your business" In any case, her romanticism does not include

children. "There is nothing that annoys me more than all of my friends who are over forty

who desperately want to have children by 50 because basically they want someone

to love them," she says. "It's too desperate. If I have kids,

I have them. If I don't, I don't." Once she's

settled in a new home in los Angeles, she says she would like to

get a dog--"a big slobbery one." In the meantime,

the actress feels as if she's still growing up

herself, and as we drive around the streets where she used to

trick-or-treat, she sums up where she is right now. "You hit a certain age,

and then you realize that you're intent on changing;

I've gotten more fragile as I've gotten older. I

thought it would be the opposite; I thought I'd get stronger. It has completely

changed the course of my relationships because I can't be in

friendships with people who: are antagonistic-Oh, damn," says Foster.

Once again, she realizes she's lost her way except this time,

we're on the freeway. As Foster tries to find the right exit,

she keeps talking. "I finally realized that I didn't have to act like I knew everything,

and like everything was OK. It was a revelation

because people didn't recoil in horror-- by giving them a little

bit of power, it helped me out. And I didn't get as hateful and crazy. It's an

interesting change, especially with my family.We're starting to have a

different relationship, with my mom especially. Parents don't

realize what they're talking about any more than you do. So why

do you keep getting mad at them?"

Given this newly tolerant perspective, it's not surprising that

Foster is able to acknowledge her own shortcommings, like the fact that once again

she has managed to get herself lost. So, after

several trips up and down a stretch of road, Foster admits

defeat, picks up her car phone and calls for directions.

Lo and behold, it turns out that she was right smack where she was supposed

to be. It's just a little hard to see the address from behind

the black tinted windows that shield her from the rest of the world.