Other recent films featuring Foster include such box office successes as Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997) and Spike Lee's Inside Man (2006). She continues to pursue an active career as performer, director, and producer.

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The Trevor Project

Although Foster refuses to discuss her private life, never responding to rumors about her sexual orientation, she has been a major contributor to The Trevor Project, a telephone counseling service for glbtq young people founded by Foster's close friend, the late Randy Stone, who served as executive producer of the Foster-directed film Little Man Tate in 1991.

In 1994, Foster was the first major donor to provide support for the short film Trevor, a film about a teenager who attempts suicide after realizing he might be gay. The film, directed by Peggy Rajski who co-produced it with Stone, won an Academy Award for live-action short film in 1995. When accepting the award, Stone pointed at Foster in the audience and said, "Jodie, I love you."

In 2007, Foster presented The Trevor Founders Award to screenwriter James Lecesne and director Peggy Rajski at the organization's Cracked Xmas event, and accepted the award posthumously on behalf of Randy Stone. She also kicked off the campaign to establish The Randy Stone Call Center by contributing the largest gift in the organization's history.

Conclusion

Foster has two sons, Charles Bernard Foster (b. 1998) and Kit Bernard Foster (b. 2001). Until recently, she lived in Los Angeles with Cydney Bernard. On May 15, 2008, however, The Daily Telegraph reported that Foster has ended her relationship with Bernard after Foster had an affair with Cynthia Mort, a screenwriter for The Brave One.

As usual, however, Foster remains silent about her personal life, and she probably will neither be confirming the press accounts of her break-up with Bernard nor marching in pride parades any time soon.

In accepting the Sherry Lansing Award for Leadership in the film industry in 2007, Foster remarked that she did not feel very powerful. "I feel fragile . . . unsure, struggling to figure it all out, trying to get there even though I'm not sure where there is." She even described herself as "nutty as a fruitcake."

Still, as one of the few women in Hollywood who is considered a "bankable star," as well as an accomplished director and producer, Foster occupies a singular place in commercial film.

Having won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, Foster would seem to have nothing left to prove, yet she is likely to continue to develop in interesting and perhaps unpredictable ways as a filmmaker.

"Coming out" is the revelation or acknowledgment that one is a member of a sexual minority, a process that is at once personal and social and often political.

Since cinema began, Hollywood has been fascinated with finding ways of representing homosexuality.

Lesbian actresses have played a significant role in Hollywood, but their contributions have rarely been recognized or spoken of openly; the "lavender marriage" is by no means a relic of the past.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual film directors have been a vital creative presence in cinema since the medium's inception over one hundred years ago.

First used by homophobes and then by glbtq activists, outing is the public revelation of a person's sexuality without the consent of that person.

Representations of transsexuality in films range from freak-show exploitation, to dramatic and documentary depictions, to the use of transsexuality as a metaphor for exploring the crossing of all kinds of borders.

Award-winning actor David Hyde Pierce, best known for his comic performance on the long-running hit comedy television series Frasier, belatedly acknowledged his homosexuality in 2007.

Bisexual British film and stage director Tony Richardson was instrumental in challenging British censorship codes, especially regarding the representation of homosexuals.

The Trevor Project, a Los Angeles-based educational organization, operates the only national 24-hour, toll-free suicide prevention hot line in the U.S. aimed at glbtq youth.