Evelyn “Brandy” Foster, the singer, Hollywood publicist and mother of Oscar-winning actress Jodie Foster, died Monday her Los Angeles home. She was 90 years old.
Her family told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement that she died from complications related to dementia. She is survived by daughters Jodie, Lucinda and Constance, and her son, actor Buddy Foster.
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“Evelyn was without a doubt the strongest person her family has ever met, a champion, a fighter, full of fire and love,” the family said in a statement Monday. “No one could beat her style, all five feet tall with naturally ‘corkscrew’ hair. Her family will remember those dimple smiles and big hugs and well-placed four-letter words. No one messed with Nana, an original like no other. May she live in all of us forever.”
Foster was raised in Rockford, Illinois and began a show business career as a singer in the 1940s. She arrived in California, where she met Jodie’s father, Air Force Lt. Col. Lucius Foster. While Lucius turned to real estate, Foster became a publicist for the high-powered Arthur Jacobs, whose clients included James Stewart, Marilyn Monroe and Gregory Peck.
The couple split when Foster was in her 30s and began managing Buddy’s career as a child actor. He became best known for playing Ken Berry’s on-screen son Mike Jones on The Andy Griffith Show and the spinoff, Mayberry FD.
Jodie was also managed by her mother, who booked her for her first commercial at 3 years old. Evelyn continued managing her daughter’s career through The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which earned Jodie her second Oscar for Best Actress. Jodie won her first Oscar for her role in the rape case courtroom drama The Accused (1988).
In an interview with USA Today in 2017, Jodie, 56, discussed her sometimes difficult relationship with her mother.
“We traveled everywhere together, and her whole identity in some ways was enmeshed in mine. It was a painful struggle,” Foster said at the time. “When I needed to walk away, she felt like she was being abandoned. I felt forever responsible, and continue to feel responsible for her well being, and the roles are reversed.”
Jodie also recalled the issues of growing up on movie sets with so few women around.
“I grew up with no women (on movie sets),” Jodie said at the time. “There was a lady that played my mom, and maybe occasionally a script supervisor or makeup artist, but most of the time, it was just me in an all-male society. I’ve only worked with one female director in my whole life, and it is amazing to me that I’ve really never been in a movie that was about a woman where it was seen from a first-person perspective, without there being a male idea or fantasy.”
Foster’s family asked that instead of flowers, “you look up at the sky, open your arms and say her name. She would get a kick out of that.”
Photo credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
