Finding Your Roots'Henry Louis Gates Jr. Says Jodie Foster Babysat His Two Daughters but 'Wouldn't Take Any Money' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Jodie Foster.Photo:Taylor Hill/FilmMagic; Anna Pocaro/IndieWire via Getty

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic; Anna Pocaro/IndieWire via Getty

TheFinding Your Rootshost tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue the two-time Oscar winner,who graduated from Yale in 1985, offered to look after his daughters Liza and Maggie during her time as an undergraduate student at the Ivy League school.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. teaching at Harvard in 1996.John Blanding/The Boston Globe via Getty

John Blanding/The Boston Globe via Getty

Gates served as Foster’s senior advisor, describing the hard-working actress, who filmed five movies during college, as a “genius.” For her senior thesis, Foster wanted to focus on Toni Morrison, and Gates thought the college student’s thesis project would benefit from an interview with Morrison herself, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction forBelovedin 1988 and a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 before hereventual deathat age 88 in 2019.

“When she [Jodie] walked in, Toni almost had a heart attack,” he continues, adding, “She wrote a brilliant senior thesis … Toni told her things — I think it was genius speaking to genius — that Jodie has never to this day told anyone else on the condition that she not publish it.”

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Jodie Foster and partner Alexandra Hedison in Park City, Utah in January.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

Foster stayed true to her word, and years later, she and Gates remain very good friends. The Harvard professor continues to have dinner with the actress and her partnerAlexandra “Alex” Hedisonseveral times a year. Sometimes, the couple even visits Gates in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer.

While Foster’s impressive acting career may have overshadowed her academic achievements in the decades since she graduated, Gates is still quick to point out his friend and former mentee’s intellectual prowess.

“There’s Jodie Foster: expert in African-American literature,” he says. “Who knew, right?”

For more on Henry Louis Gates Jr., pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.

Finding Your Rootsairs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on PBS.

source: people.com