The Oscar-winning actor and director Jodie Foster has married her girlfriend, Alexandra Hedison, at an undisclosed location, according to her publicist.

Foster, who came out at last year's Golden Globes, was previously involved with Cydney Bernard, with whom she has two sons. Their 20-year relationship ended in 2008.

Reports of the wedding first surfaced over the weekend via the celebrity broadcaster E! Foster lives in California, one of 17 states where gay marriage is currently legal in the US.

Foster made headlines last year when she used the 2013 Golden Globes awards to address her sexuality for the first time directly. In a wide-ranging speech while accepting the Cecil B DeMille lifetime achievement award, she said she had come out to friends but regretted that a public declaration in the media was required.

"I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age," she said. "In those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, coworkers and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her. To everyone she actually met."

Foster's best known roles include the showgirl Talullah in Bugsy Malone and a prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver while still a child. She won Oscars for her turns as a rape victim in 1988's The Accused and as Hannibal Lector's FBI confidante Clarice Starling in 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. In the past three decades Foster has combined acting with directing, overseeing the Mel Gibson comedy The Beaver in 2011 and co-starring in the Roman Polanski farce Carnage the same year. She played a fearsome secretary of defence determined to keep immigrants out of an extra-terrestrial utopia in the 2013 science fiction film Elysium.

• Sam Leith: the genius of Foster's coming out speech