Forgotten 1980 Film Starring Teen Rock Star Became a Cult Classic
In February 1980, the movie Foxes was released to little fanfare. Starring a pre-Yale Jodie Foster, along with Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, and a young Scott Baio, the gritty coming-of-age drama about friends growing up in L.A. featured the acting debut of Cherie Currie, the lead singer from the teen glam band The Runaways.
Foxes also marked the film directorial debut of Adrian Lyne, who would go on to helm the megahits Flashdance and Fatal Attraction.
Reviews were mixed. At the time of its release, The New York Times noted, "Foxes bears a certain resemblance to such recent English films as Quadrophenia or That'll Be the Day. It has more glitter than either of these, but less coherence: Adrian Lyne, the director of Foxes, was previously a director of commercials, and he seems to have more flair for mounting scenes fashionably than for stringing them together."
Foxes earned $7.4 million at the box office, per Box Office Mojo, but went on to find a cult following thanks to cable and video rentals. Decades later, fans still say the film is underrated.
Cherie Currie looked back on 'Foxes'
Currie initially found fame in the mid-1970s alongside Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Jackie Fox as part of the all-female punk band The Runaways. When she decided to segue to acting, Foxes seemed like the perfect part. Currie played troubled teen Annie in the film.
In a 2020 interview with Classic Rock, Currie recalled, "Working with Jodie in Foxes was a dream come true. I'd not acted before. I'd had a couple of lessons from my elder sister Sondra, who's been an actress all her life, but I just played myself. The druggy parts were real easy… I'd been there, done that."
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More recently, Currie reunited with Baio, who played Brad in Foxes just as he was finding fame as Chachi in Happy Days. During an April 2026 appearance on The Scott Baio Podcast, Currie revealed she was offered parts in both Foxes and the Ramones movie, Rock and Roll High School, at the same time.
"I made the choice to do Foxes," she shared. "I was just a big fan of [Foster's film] Taxi Driver and of course [Baio was] on television on just about every show it seemed. So I was very excited to do Foxes."
The actress and singer recalled that it took about two years for Foxes to be completed. "We shot Foxes, I turned 18 on the set," Currie said. "I mean, it took them quite a while, well over a year and a half to edit and put that film together to come out in 1980 because we were shooting in ‘78."
Noting that the film "definitely was" ahead of its time, Currie admitted that it may have been ahead of Lyne's time as well.
"Adrian, I had no idea that he was going to go on to be such a big-time director," the Foxes star said. "I was a little pissed at him a little bit to be honest because when I saw Fatal Attraction and I saw Jacob's Ladder, and I thought, why the hell couldn't you have been a better director when you did Foxes? I just was thinking, why couldn't we have really had a big smash? But that was Adrian's very first film."
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This story was originally published May 14, 2026 at 3:42 AM.