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My whole family read the book, one after the other. Our edition is falling apart after so much use. I highly recommend this book. Perhaps the best biography I have ever read.


transparently self-serving   January 14, 2001
 5 out of 15 found this review helpful

Clearly Buddy Foster didn't inherit the brains in this family! This book is packed with internal inconsistencies, factual impossibilities and, more annoyingly, long rambling sections leading nowhere. Appallingly bad bio!!


Interesting Biography   September 17, 2000
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book provides exactly the sort of information that it purports to in its advertisements. This is why I find it perplexing that readers express such indignation upon having purchased it themselves. If you want to understand the family history and background of Jodie Foster, this book certainly covers that subject matter thoroughly. In fact, an examination of these relationships could be extended towards an understanding of relationships in general. It is reasonably well-written and, based on what the author says in the book, he apparently holds the subject of his biography in high regard. The issue of whether the book should have been written is a separate one from a judgment of the quality of the work and whether it achieves its stated purpose. My rating reflects the latter standard.


Just a desperate way to make money!   January 22, 2000
 8 out of 19 found this review helpful

Jodie is my favorite actress, and she's a very respected woman in the industry. She have the rights to keep her personal life to herself, and I admire her for doing the best she can even tough we all know that it's a pretty hard thing to do when you're a famous person. Her jealous brother, should just be ashamed of what he did! She's great, famous, and sorry but you're not Buddy! It was a desperate way to make publicity and to get the attention you desperatly needed! From what we heard from Miss Foster about this "book", she's totally right. And since there are no real relationship between Buddy and the lady herself, that says it all!


A dual biography   April 6, 1999
 37 out of 41 found this review helpful

The advantage of having a biography written by a close relative is that the author doesn't have to rely on interviews with strangers and be at the mercy of other people's agendas or outright lies. The disadvantage is that the author is usually much less famous and successful than the subject and the book tends to try to increase the author's importance. This is the case with "Foster Child". Along with all the childhood stories, the first half of the book is a comparison of Buddy's childhood career with Jodie's and no one is buying this book to read about Buddy Foster. The second half of the book is more on track. Its main advantage is that only someone who grew up with Jodie could go into the details of her more than unusual childhood, including the shocking explanation of how someone named Alicia Christian Foster came to be known as Jodie. I was under the impression from what I had read previously that Jodie's father was an evil cad who ran away from home never to be heard from again. Well, he may have been an evil cad, but the real story is much more complicated than that. The book is hardest of all, by far, on their mother Brandy. From how she used her children to live off of (she spent every penny of Buddy's several hundred thousand dollar acting nest egg before he was 21), to how she tried to shape the children's thinking and poison them against their father, she is the underlying villain of the book. The mother's attention follows the money. When it is clear that Jodie is the star of the family, and the main breadwinner, she gets her mother's attention to the detriment of the rest of the family. Other than subject of their mother, this is not a particularly gossip filled book, so those that are looking for that may want to look elsewhere. The one "controversial" element of Jodie's life: "Is she or isn't she?" is given short shrift. Has their man-hating lesbian mother turned Jodie into a man-hating lesbian? Even her brother isn't sure. What he is sure of is that Jodie has become a supremely successful person with no one to share her life with (this book was written before Jodie had a baby) and he worries she will stay that way. What is also clear is that Jodie is a charter member of the "I took the part because I wanted to play a strong woman" club. Generically, she will say "I look for good stories" when choosing a movie, but when commenting individually on roles there is always a feminist agenda behind it. The real-life victim that "The Accused" is based on may have committed suicide or been a basket case for the rest of her life but in the movie the men are prosecuted and convicted so that puts it in "The woman fights back and wins" category and makes it a "good story". Although Buddy chronicles the family's interrelationships throughout the years, there is no description of his current relationship with Jodie nor her reaction to his writing of this book. When questioned about this, a publicist for the book said, "It's not accurate to characterize their relationship as estranged." It sounds like doubletalk to me. Buddy describes Jodie as someone who wants to make movies her way and then be left alone. If she's recognized on the street she will deny she is Jodie Foster vociferously under all circumstances short of a DNA test. This is due partly, of course, to the John Hinckley episode, which is explained more completely here than anywhere else I've seen, along with Hinckley's copycat loonies. All in all, it is a description of an extremely intelligent, secure and insecure, driven person who sacrifices her personal life for other people and what she considers a greater cause. Is it worth it? Only Jodie Foster knows and she's not telling.