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Video: Jodie Foster Comes Out (Again) During Golden Globes
Jodie Foster at the Golden Globes (Getty Images)
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Jodie Foster stole this year's Golden Globes during her acceptance speech of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. On national television, she noted that she was gay but added, "I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago."
After a montage showing the highlights of her long acting and directing career, Foster took to the stage and gave a six-minute speech for the ages. She referenced the Saturday Night Live character Sally O'Malley, saying, "I'm fifty! I'm fifty!" and thanked Robert Downey Jr. for continually talking me off the ledge when I continually foaming at the mouth saying 'I'm done with acting, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.' Trust me 47 years in the film business is a long time." She also thanked the HFPA for honoring her, "This is the most fun party of the year and tonight I feel like the prom queen." Then she began, "So while I'm here being all confessional I have the sudden urge to say something I've never really been able to air in public..." Here's video—her remarks start around the 6:10 mark:
Here's a partial transcript:
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So while I'm here being all confessional I have the sudden urge to say something I've never really been able to air in public… A declaration I'm a little nervous about, but maybe not as nervous as my publicist—hi, Jennifer. Uh, but, you know, I'm gonna put it out there, right? Loud and proud, right? I'm gonna need your support on this. I'm… single. Yes, I am. I am single. No, I'm kidding. But I'm not really kidding but I'm kind of kidding. I mean, thank you for the enthusiasm. Can I get a wolf whistle or something? [NBC sound cuts out]… coming out speech tonight because I already did my coming out a thousand years ago in the Stone Age. In those very quaint days when a fragile young would open up to trusted friends, family, coworkers and then gradually proudly to everyone who knew her and actually met. But now apparently I'm told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their personal life with a press conference, fragrance and prime-time reality show. And you guys might be surprised but I'm not Honey Boo Boo child.
No, I’m sorry, that’s just not me and it never will be. But please don't cry, because it would be so boring. I would have to make out with Marion Cotillard, spank Daniel Craig’s bottom, you know, just to stay on the air. Not bad work if you can get it, you know, but seriously, if you had been a public figure since the time you were a toddler. If you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe then too you’d value privacy about all else. Privacy.
Someday in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was. I have given everything up there since the time that I was three years old and that’s a reality show enough, don’t you think?
There are a few secrets to keep your psyche in tact... The first: Love people and stay beside them...[Thanks her team.] And Mel Gibson: You know you saved me too.
There is no way I could stand here tonight without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life. My heroic co-parent. My ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor-ski buddy-consigiliere-most beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard. Thank you, Cyd. I am so proud of our modern family, our amazing sons, Charlie and Kit who are my reason to breathe and to evolve. ... Boys, in case you didn't know it, this song, like all of this, this song is for you
You see, Charlie and Kit, sometimes your mom loses it too. I can't help but getting moony. This feels like the end of one era and the beginning of something else. Scary and exciting and now what, what I may never be up on this stage again or any stage for that matter. Change, gotta love it. I will continue to tell stories, to move people by being moved. The greatest job in the world. It's just that from now i may holding a different talking stick. And maybe it won't be so sparkly. Maybe it won't be on 3,000 screens. Maybe it will be so quiet and delicate that only dogs can hear it whistle. But it will be my writing on the wall. Jodie Foster was here, I still am, and I want to be seen, to be understood deeply, and not to be so lonely… Here's to the next 50 years.
But don't worry, Foster is not retiring—backstage, she said, "No. Not really. I think it stands for itself and it's an expression of who I am and what I'm thinking and feeling." She may concentrate on directing more.Golden Globes co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler acknowledged Foster's speech at the end of the night, with Poehler saying, "Good night, we're going home with Jodie Foster."
The NY Times' Op-Ed columnist Frank Bruni was moved by Foster's speech. He wrote on his Facebook page, "It's precisely BECAUSE Jodie Foster's coming-out --- if that's what it was --- had such a stop-start, am-I-doing-this, I'm-scared-but-determined quality to it that it was so powerful. She made a beautiful point about privacy. She made clear how tough her road and even that moment was. In its incomplete and fuzzy way, her speech was as true a testament as I've ever seen/heard to the fear, loneliness and stubborn hope of someone who doesn't feel she owes the world clarity or an answer but feels she owes herself, and history, and the political moment, some kind of truth. Jodie had weeks to rehearse, but worked through all of that in real time, onstage, before our eyes. Wow."
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