Meg Foster

Margaret Foster (born May 14, 1948) is an American film and television actress. Some of her many roles were in the 1979 TV miniseries version of The Scarlet Letter, and the films Ticket to Heaven, The Osterman Weekend, and They Live. Early years Foster was born in Reading, Pennsylvania to David and Nancy (née Adamson) Foster on May 14, 1948, and grew up in Rowayton, Connecticut with four siblings: sisters Gray, Jan, and Nina, and brother Ian. She studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York. Career In 1968, Foster acted in a Cornell Summer Theater production of John Brown's Body. Later in 1968, she was in the off-Broadway production of The Empire Builders. When Loretta Swit was unable to reprise her television-film role 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, 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." 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."