The next marker in the Jodie Foster renaissance has been added: She just won her first ever Emmy for her role in “True Detective: Night Country.”
During the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Foster took the stage at Peacock Theater to accept the statuette for lead actress in a limited series for her performance as Liz Danvers, the acid-tongued police chief who is tasked with investigating the disappearance of eight men in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska.
Her acclaimed performance in the HBO anthology series arrived more than three decades after her other memorable turn as a law enforcement official: FBI agent Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs,” the 1991 film that earned her a second Oscar for lead actress (her first was for 1988’s “The Accused”).
Foster has made a lasting impression from the stage before. She delivered a memorable speech in 2013, getting personal when she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globes. The veteran actor included references to her sexual orientation and a public thank-you to her former partner, with whom Foster has two children.
“I guess I have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never been able to air in public that I’m a little nervous about,” Foster said. “I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and co-workers and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met.”
Foster’s return to the awards scene kicked off earlier this year when she earned a supporting actress Oscar nomination for Netflix’s “Nyad.” She played Bonnie Stoll in the film, the best friend and coach to the long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening).
“True Detective: Night Country” earned a total of 19 Emmy nominations — a culmination of acclaim for the show’s formidable fourth season, which became the most-watched iteration of the franchise after it debuted in January.