Jodie Foster

It's not easy to find Jodie Foster. Most of the time, she's enfolded deep within her characters, plumbing their hearts and minds. But in The Silence of the Lambs, there's a brief scene — really no more than an air pocket between the film's gale-force gusts of dread and terror — in which the actress lays herself bare. Foster's Clarice Starling and her boss, Jack Crawford, are driving away from a West Virginia autopsy at which he had offhandedly shunted her to a corner. ''Starling,'' he says amiably, ''when I told that sheriff we shouldn't talk in front of a woman, it really burned you, didn't it? It was just smoke.''

Starling looks at him, and, with a soft voice and a level gaze, she detonates.

''It matters, Mr. Crawford,'' she says. ''Cops look at you to see how to act. It matters.''

That moment alone, with its hairline calibrations of anger, frustration, and caution, should earn Foster an Oscar nomination next February. It could also serve as her motto. Jodie Foster has always known that it matters. The parts you play, the words you say, the choices you make that affect your career and your conscience. And in 1991, her two decades of work culminated in a pair of films — Lambs and her directorial debut, Little Man Tate — that began to redraw the roles of women in Hollywood, on-screen and off.

It sounds like a steep accomplishment, but Foster has always worn her precocity well. The 9-year-old's startlingly husky voice, the 13-year-old's utterly unsentimental portrayal of a prostitute in Taxi Driver, and the 18-year-old's desire to pursue an adult career and a Yale honors degree (she got both) have all looked good on her. When she recently took home a lifetime achievement award from the Boston Film Festival at 28, it was no surprise. Overachievement becomes her.