Foster was born in Reading, Pennsylvania to David and Nancy (née Adamson) Foster on May 14, 1948,[2] and grew up in Rowayton, Connecticut with four siblings: sisters Gray, Jan, and Nina, and brother Ian.[3][4][5] She studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York.[6]
Career
In 1968, Foster acted in a Cornell Summer Theater production of John Brown's Body.[7] Later in 1968, she was in the off-Broadway production of The Empire Builders.[8]
When Loretta Swit was unable to reprise her television-film role[citation needed] of Detective Christine Cagney when the film was adapted into the Cagney & Lacey TV series, Foster took on the role for the short (six episodes) first season,[9] before she was replaced by Sharon Gless. Entertainment columnist Dick Kleiner wrote in August 1982 about Foster's being dropped from the show: "It isn't a pretty story, no matter who you talk to. Meg was so hurt and distraught that she still isn't talking. But she told friends that she felt as though she had been hit by a truck."[10] Kleiner's story implied that Foster's dismissal from the show had cost her other opportunities. "Until that news spread," he wrote, "she was an in-demand actress."[10]
Foster's striking pale-blue eyes were dubbed "the eyes of 1979" by Mademoiselle magazine.[11] In a newspaper interview that year, she said in her opinion, her eyes were not "so distinctive".[12] However, some film and television producers had Foster wear contact lenses to lessen what they considered her eyes' "distractive" effect.[12]
^Ward, Jack (1993). "Meg Foster". Television Guest Stars: An Illustrated Career Chronicle for 678 Performers of the Sixties and Seventies. McFarland & Company. p. 187. ISBN978-0-89950-807-8.
^Terrace, Vincent (2011). Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2010 (2nd ed.). Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. pp. 151–152. ISBN978-0-7864-6477-7.
