--- name: "Gloria Foster" canonical: "https://film.one/person/gloria-foster" fi1m_id: "gloria-foster" imdb_id: "nm0287825" tmdb_id: 9364 wikidata_id: "Q455234" roles: ["Actor"] born: "15 November 1933" died: "29 September 2001" reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_fi1m_score: 77 average_as: "actor" average_over: 3 updated: "2026-10-04T22:47:52.811276+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Gloria Foster ## Identity Gloria Foster - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/gloria-foster - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** gloria-foster - **IMDb ID:** nm0287825 - **TMDB ID:** 9364 - **Wikidata ID:** Q455234 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Foster, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q455234, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0287825/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/9364 Actor. Born 15 November 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Died 29 September 2001. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 15 November 1933, Chicago, Illinois, USA - **Died:** 29 September 2001 - **Active:** 1964–2003 - **Frequently works with:** [Carrie-Anne Moss](https://film.one/person/carrie-anne-moss.md), [Hugo Weaving](https://film.one/person/hugo-weaving.md), [Joel Silver](https://film.one/person/joel-silver.md), [Keanu Reeves](https://film.one/person/keanu-reeves.md), [Lana Wachowski](https://film.one/person/lana-wachowski.md), [Laurence Fishburne](https://film.one/person/laurence-fishburne.md), [Lilly Wachowski](https://film.one/person/lilly-wachowski.md) - **Average Fi1m score:** 77, as actor, over 3 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 1960s 84 (1), 1990s 88 (1), 2000s 60 (1) - **Score spread:** 2 at 80+, 1 at 60–79, 0 under 60 - **Lead roles:** 0 of 3 acting credits billed first or second - **Genres:** Action 2, Science Fiction 2, Adventure 1, Crime 1, Drama 1, Thriller 1 - **Screen time:** 6 hours of reviewed films - **Box office:** $1,202m across 2 films with figures - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Foster, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q455234, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0287825/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/9364 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Matrix*](https://film.one/film/the-matrix.md) (88), [*The Matrix Reloaded*](https://film.one/film/the-matrix-reloaded.md) (60) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Gloria Foster > Gloria Foster made two films that matter thirty-five years apart and spent most of the time between them on stage, and it shows. She plays stillness as if it were a decision, and she never once asks the camera for anything. In *The Cool World* (1964) Gloria Foster has two or three scenes as Duke's mother, most of them in a kitchen, with a lover (Ted Butler) who is not the boy's father, and she makes a whole life out of not quite looking at her son. There is no speech about it. The film is about a Harlem teenager who wants a gun, and Shirley Clarke shot it in the streets with a cast almost nobody had seen; Foster fits that plan by doing nothing that looks like acting. Thirty-five years later she is in a kitchen again, in *The Matrix* (1999), as the Oracle, and this time she looks straight at the young man in front of her and waits for him to catch up. The two scenes belong to different centuries of filmmaking and the same actress, and what she is doing in both is withholding. The screen was never the main event. Foster came to New York around 1963, made her name off-Broadway in *In White America* (1963) playing several parts including a teenage girl trying to integrate a school, and then went into the classical repertory with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, playing *Medea* (1965) and the kind of monumental women, Mother Courage, Clytemnestra, Volumnia, that most companies did not then offer a Black actress. Film came in a small cluster in the mid-sixties, *The Cool World* and *Nothing But a Man* (1964), and then largely stopped. She was choosy, and said so: "I was always thinking in terms of a more difficult role." That produced long gaps, and it also means the screen record is a small cluster of films and not much else. The stage reviews were not uniform. Her early classical work was sometimes called uneven, too intense at the start, with the voice not always under control, and later interpretations were occasionally found wilful. None of that reaches the screen. The camera supplies the intensity for her, and she seems to know it, so she gives it less than she would give a house. As the Oracle she is dry, unhurried and faintly amused, delivering a script's heaviest lines as though they were remarks about the weather, and the film is calmer for the minutes she is in it. In *The Cool World* she unsettled us more than we expected, because her tiredness is so ordinary; you can see exactly how the boy became invisible to her, and she does it without a raised voice. She returned to Broadway in *Having Our Say* (1995) opposite Mary Alice, and made *The Matrix Reloaded* (2003), again as the Oracle, which was her final screen appearance. Everyone has seen *The Matrix*. Watch *The Cool World* for her. Two kitchens, thirty-five years apart, is not a screen career, and she would probably have said the stage was the point. It is enough to make us wish someone had asked her more often. ## Biography Gloria Foster (1933–2001) was an American actress whose career spanned stage and screen. She began acting professionally in the early 1960s and appeared on Broadway in Lorraine Hansberry’s *A Raisin in the Sun*. She received acclaim for her performances in *In White America* and *Having Our Say*, winning three Obie Awards. Foster played the Oracle in *The Matrix* (1999) and *The Matrix Reloaded* (2003). Her other film credits include *The Cool World* (1964), *Nothing But a Man* (1964), *The Comedians* (1967), *Leonard Part 6* (1987) and *City of Hope* (1991). She also appeared in television series such as *The Cosby Show* and *Law & Order*. She was married to actor Clarence Williams III from 1967 until their divorce in 1984. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (3) - *The Matrix Reloaded* (2003), Fi1m 60, as The Oracle — [page](https://film.one/film/the-matrix-reloaded.md) - *The Matrix* (1999), Fi1m 88, as Oracle — [page](https://film.one/film/the-matrix.md) - *The Cool World* (1964), Fi1m 84, as Duke's Mom — [page](https://film.one/film/the-cool-world.md) ## Complete filmography (28) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Matrix Resurrections* (2021), as Oracle (archive footage) (uncredited) — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/film/the-matrix-resurrections.md) - *A History of God* (2005), as The Voice of History - *Return to Source: The Philosophy of The Matrix* (2004), as The Oracle - *The Matrix Reloaded* (2003), as The Oracle — Fi1m 60, [page](https://film.one/film/the-matrix-reloaded.md) - *Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years* (2002), series, as Narrator - *Soul Food* (2000), series, as Ella Lester - *The Matrix* (1999), as Oracle — Fi1m 88, [page](https://film.one/film/the-matrix.md) - *Percy & Thunder* (1993), as Sugar Brown - *City of Hope* (1991), as Jeanette - *Separate but Equal* (1991), as Vivian 'Buster' Marshall - *Separate but Equal* (1991), series, as Vivian 'Buster' Marshall - *Law & Order* (1990), series, as Satima Tate — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/tv/law-and-order.md) - *Leonard Part 6* (1987), as Medusa - *The Atlanta Child Murders* (1985), series, as Camille Bell - *The Cosby Show* (1984), series, as Dr. Barbara Bracy - *The House of Dies Drear* (1984), as Sheila Small - *American Playhouse* (1982), series, as Mrs. Hatch, Lee - *Coriolanus* (1979), as Volumnia - *Top Secret* (1978), as Judith - *To All My Friends on Shore* (1972), as Serena Blue - *Man and Boy* (1971), as Ivy Revers - *The Angel Levine* (1970), as Sally - *The Bill Cosby Show* (1969), series, as Dolores Winters - *The Mod Squad* (1968), series, Actor - *The Outcasts* (1968), series, Actor - *The Comedians* (1967), as Mrs. Philipot - *Nothing But a Man* (1964), as Lee - *The Cool World* (1964), as Duke's Mom — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/the-cool-world.md) ## Gallery - ![Gloria Foster](https://film.one/media/person/88204/gallery-330a274c7e17.jpg) Gloria Foster — ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Gloria_Foster_1970.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Photo of Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes and his wife at the time, actress Gloria Foster, who had a guest star role as a blind friend of Linc's. (1970)](https://film.one/media/person/88204/gallery-ee1c6b1ef8e7.jpg) Photo of Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes and his wife at the time, actress Gloria Foster, who had a guest star role as a blind friend of Linc's. (1970) — ABC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Gloria_Foster_and_Clarence_Williams_Mod_Squad_1970.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) ## Awards ### Other awards — 1 won, 1 nominated - Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress 1988: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress (nominated), for *Leonard Part 6* - Theatre World Award 1966: Theatre World Award (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/gloria-foster