Finding Your Roots' Henry Louis Gates Jr. Says Jodie Foster Babysat His Two Daughters but 'Wouldn't Take Any Money' (Exclusive)

Jodie Foster wasn’t just one of Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s brightest mentees when he taught at Yale — she was a voluntary babysitter for his kids, too.

The Finding Your Roots host tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue the two-time Oscar winner, who graduated from Yale in 1985, offered to look after his daughters Liza and Maggie during her time as an undergraduate student at the Ivy League school.

“She volunteered to babysit, and I said, ‘Okay.' She wouldn't take any money," recalls Gates, who recently debuted Gospel, a four-hour PBS docuseries exploring Black spirituality, and an accompanying special, Gospel Live!

Gates served as Foster’s senior advisor, describing the hard-working actress, who filmed five movies during college, as a “genius.” For her senior thesis, Foster wanted to focus on Toni Morrison, and Gates thought the college student's thesis project would benefit from an interview with Morrison herself, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Beloved in 1988 and a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 before her eventual death at age 88 in 2019.

“Toni Morrison was very prickly about interviews, so I called Toni and I said I had a student who was really exceptional,” he recalls referring to the actress by her real first name. “I said her name was Alicia Foster because I didn't want to be playing unfair. And she said, 'Well, if you think she's that good, I'll see her.'"

“When she [Jodie] walked in, Toni almost had a heart attack,” he continues, adding, “She wrote a brilliant senior thesis … Toni told her things — I think it was genius speaking to genius — that Jodie has never to this day told anyone else on the condition that she not publish it.”

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Foster stayed true to her word, and years later, she and Gates remain very good friends. The Harvard professor continues to have dinner with the actress and her partner Alexandra "Alex" Hedison several times a year. Sometimes, the couple even visits Gates in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer.

While Foster’s impressive acting career may have overshadowed her academic achievements in the decades since she graduated, Gates is still quick to point out his friend and former mentee’s intellectual prowess.

“There's Jodie Foster: expert in African-American literature,” he says. “Who knew, right?”

For more on Henry Louis Gates Jr., pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here. 

Finding Your Roots airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on PBS.