When Jodie Foster was three years old, she appeared in a Coppertone commercial. But behind the toddler with the dimpled smile stood a fiercely determined woman—Evelyn Ella “Brandy” Foster, her mother, who steered Jodie’s life with the precision and resilience carved from survival. A divorced single mother of four in Los Angeles, Evelyn didn’t just manage Jodie’s career, she constructed it, moment by moment, audition by audition. She shielded her youngest child from the dangers of early stardom w