Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes speech touched on many personal subjects such as her sexuality and her mother suffering of dementia, but the Cecile B. DeMile Award recipient had no problem sharing her life with her peers and fans – in her own unique way.
When Jodie took to the stage to accept the lifetime achievement award at Sunday night’s Golden Globes, many people in the audience were expecting a “coming out” speech of sorts, and although the iconic actress did confirm her sexuality she did it in a beautiful way that left hardly a dry eye in the entire audience.
The 50-year-old actress and director has been thrown into the media spotlight since she was a young girl, and so she decided she didn’t owe anyone an explanation of who she is but she did explain who her ex-partner is to her.
“There’s no way I could stand here without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life,” Jodie said in her touching speech. “My heroic co-parent, my ex partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consiglieri, most beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard.”
Suddenly Twitter was set ablaze with celebs praising the Foster speech.
“Jodie foster – rather amazing speech,” Rosie O’Donnell tweeted.
Meanwhile, Perez Hilton was more focused on the big reveal as he tweeted, “I called it!! Thanks Jodie Foster for just coming out as a lesbian – in such an odd way!! Cray cray and fabulous! #GoldenGlobes.”
Her speech was about much more than just if she was gay or straight, however, and although Perez may have missed that part Jodie was expecting people to focus in on that one detail so she didn’t hesitate to play with their minds at the beginning of her speech. “I guess I have a sudden urge to say something I’ve never been able to air in public that I’m a little nervous about – but maybe not as nervous as my publicist,” the Taxi Driver actress said nervously. “So I’m just going to put it out there, loud and proud, right? I’m going to need your support on this. I am, uh-“
A dramatic pause has the crowd waiting for the words “I’m gay” to resonate throughout the room, but Jodie had a different confession to make.
“I’m single,” she said as the room erupted in laughter.
On a serious note, however, she decided that the paparazzi frenzies and the tabloids didn’t need some big official statement and “press conference” about who she is, but that doesn’t mean she is trying to hide anything.
“I already did my coming out a thousand years ago, in the Stone Age,” she continued. “Those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to friends and family and co-workers then gradually to everyone that knew her, everyone she actually met. But now apparently I’m told that every celebrity is to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a primetime reality show.”
She explained that asking for those things isn’t quite as fair especially when you’re asking people who have been in the Hollywood limelight since they were young.
“If you had been a public figure from the time you were a toddler… then maybe you too might value privacy above all else,” Foster explained. “I have given everything up there from the time I was three years old, that’s reality show enough, do you think?”
Needless to say, the audience made it clear that they agreed.
As her sons Charles and Christopher Foster looked on with wide, proud grins their mother had everyone around them breaking down in tears.
“In the future people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was,” the Silence of Lambs actress continued.
Foster herself fought back tears during her speech when she began to reach out to her mother who suffers from dementia.
“Mom, I know you are inside those blue eyes somewhere,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I love you, I love you, I love you, and I hope that if I say this three times, you will magically and perfectly enter into your soul, fill you with grace and the joy of knowing that you did good in this life, you’re a great mom, please take that with you when you’re finally okay to go.”
As she shared the most intimate and personal parts of her life with the crowd of adoring fans she then announce that she would be making some career changes that had some fearful that she was retiring.
The well-spoken actress told the crowd that would be “holding a different talking stick” from then on.
“Maybe it won’t be as sparkly, maybe it won’t open up 3,000 screens, and maybe it will be so quiet and delicate that only dogs can hear it whistle,” Foster said in the speech before clarifying back stage that she definitely wasn’t referring to retiring.
“No, I am not retiring,” she told reporters backstage. “I could never stop acting. You’d have to drag me with wild horses.”
She did, however, reveal that her priority now may be directing rather than acting but she is certainly in no hurry to leave the entertainment business – and we certainly aren’t ready to see her go either.
