Jodie Foster says Oscar-nomination prevented her from being sexually abused in Hollywood
Jodie Foster has revealed that her 1977 Oscar nomination for her role in cult-classic film, Taxi Driver, “saved” her from sexual abuse in Hollywood.
Foster played a teenage sex worker in the Martin Scorsese-directed film. Speaking to NPR’s Fresh Air, the Silence of the Lambs actor opened up about the sexual abuse at the heart of the Hollywood scene.
Foster began, “I’ve really had to examine that, like, how did I get saved? There were microaggressions, of course. Anybody who’s in the workplace has had misogynist microaggressions. That’s just a part of being a woman, right? But what kept me from having those bad experiences, those terrible experiences?”
She went on, “And what I came to believe … is that I had a certain amount of power by the time I was, like, 12.” Foster famously began acting at the age of three years old. She starred in Taxi Driver at the age of 12.
“So by the time I had my first Oscar nomination, I was part of a different category of people that had power and I was too dangerous to touch,” Foster mused.
She continued, “I could’ve ruined people’s careers or I could’ve called ‘Uncle,’ so I wasn’t on the block.”
Additionally, Foster believes her personality traits may have saved her from experiencing sexual trauma in the industry: “It’s very difficult to emotionally manipulate me because I don’t operate with my emotions on the surface.”
She added, “Predators use whatever they can in order to manipulate and get people to do what they want them to do.”
Of course, she lamented, “That’s much easier when the person is younger, when the person is weaker, when a person has no power.”
Foster’s latest major project was the HBO series True Detective: Night Country. Her new French-language film, A Private Life, is scheduled for a theatrical release in the US from January 16th.
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