I . Jodie Foster
(1962– )
a US actor who has won Oscars for The Accused (1988) and Silence of the Lambs (1991). She was a child actor who became famous in Taxi Driver (1976). Her more recent films have included Sommersby (1993), Contact (1997) and Panic Room (2002), and she also directed Home for the Holidays (1995). She established her own production company, Egg Pictures, in 1990. When John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, he said he did it to impress Foster, because he loved her.
II . Norman Foster
(1935– )
an English architect. He is well known for his ‘high-tech’ style (= using metal and glass to show the structure of a building instead of hiding it). His most famous buildings include the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (1979) near Norwich, England, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (1986) in Hong Kong, Stansted Airport (1991), the Swiss Re Tower (2004) and the world’s tallest bridge in Millau, France (2005). He was made a knight in 1990 and a life peer in 1999.
III . Stephen Foster
(1826–1864)
a US writer of almost 200 popular songs, most of them about the US South. They are sometimes called folk songs because they are so simple. Most were for musical shows performed by white entertainers with words representing the speech of African Americans at that time. They include Oh! Susanna , Old Folks at Home , Camptown Races , My Old Kentucky Home , Beautiful Dreamer and Old Black Joe . Foster himself only visited the South once.