Jodie Foster is having quite a season.

As the star of HBO’s six-episode fourth season “True Detective: Night Country” she is making her first TV appearance since 1975. A Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominee for “Nyad,” about long distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s record-busting Cuba to Florida feat, Foster, 61, is touted to be Oscar-nominated for that performance as well.

This season of “True Detective” is set in the Arctic – “This endless landscape of America where everything can happen,” says writer-director Issa López – among the indigenous people who were born there and workers and scientists from around the world. A very strange series of deaths among a research team sees Foster’s Liz Danvers and Kali Reis’s Evangeline Navarro paired to solve the puzzle of a case.

Why this leap into streaming television?

“Well, ’75 is a long time ago. I was in the feature world,” Foster said during a virtual roundtable interview, “and we’ve come to this amazing moment in cinema history when real narrative is on streaming.”

Foster’s career began with a bared bum as the poster baby for Coppertone Suntan oil. She was three.  From child star to notoriety as a teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s landmark “Taxi Driver” and then as the fixation of a mentally ill, delusional fan who reportedly shot President Ronald Reagan to impress her, Foster has seen all sides of celebrity.

Among many honors she’s won two Best Actress Academy Awards – as Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs” and a rape victim in “The Accused” – while dramatically reversing a lifetime of intense personal privacy by coming out.  How does she view all of this?

“It has been a long, fantastic adventure. I’ve worked for 58 years in the film business. There are things I don’t want to repeat that I already did. Some stories I’ve already told.

“At 60 I’m happier than I’ve ever been —  and knowing now that it’s not my time but time to help a team. That’s so much more fun, being part of a team and watch actors who have different strengths than you.

“Now, I’ve accomplished so many goals, it’s about saying, What gets me excited? It can be a small thing.

“As a director I love it when other actors are directors and I feel they’ve got eyes on the table.

“For me this was a genuinely centered indigenous story. I wanted to know more. I wanted to support and make sure their story was centered.”

Has this inspired any aspirations to detecting herself?

“I would be a bad detective,” she answered, “because I’m far sighted and wouldn’t recognize anything.”

“True Detective: Night Country” airs 2 episodes on HBO on Jan. 14, available to stream on MAX