Jodie Foster Says This Is Her Only Career Regret
Jodie Foster's been in front of the camera since she was a little kid, and by the time she hit her teens, she was already juggling wildly different roles.
In the same year, she played a Disney teen in Freaky Friday, a lead in in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, and a pint-sized nightclub singer in Bugsy Malone. Not exactly your standard child star resume.
Foster nailed serious drama before most actors figure out how to hit their mark, and she didn't slow down. She won her first Oscar in 1988 for The Accused, after already being nominated at just 13 years old for Taxi Driver. And in 1991, she won again as Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs — the FBI trainee who went face-to-face with Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter in one of the most iconic thrillers ever made.
She's kept that momentum going for decades, picking up two more Oscar nominations and switching gears into directing with films like Little Man Tate, The Beaver, and Money Monster. By most accounts, it's been a stellar career.
But if you ask Jodie Foster? She's got one big regret. In an interview with CBS, she put it simply:
"I wish that I could live my life without knowing what it was to be famous. It's the one…regret that I have. It definitely changes how I see the world."
Foster grew up in the public eye, and not always in a safe way. In 1980, she became the obsession of John Hinckley Jr., the man who infamously tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan just to get her attention. The real-life incident eerily echoed Taxi Driver, where Robert De Niro's character fantasizes about killing a presidential candidate.
"It makes you completely different being in the public your whole life," she said. "You decide to be an actor at 22 or 23 years old, usually the personality is, ‘I want you to notice me…I want pictures to be taken of me, and I want people to talk about how I look.' But when you've been in the business your entire life, you safeguard your life. People always try to take it away from you. You don't live as much because you are a little more guarded about life."
And Hinckley wasn't the only one. Foster was also stalked by another man while she was studying at Yale — this one reportedly wanted to kill her.
It's no surprise that after a lifetime of dealing with the darkest corners of fame, Foster's biggest wish is to know what it's like to just be…normal. But even with all that, she's stuck with acting, built one of the most respected careers in Hollywood, and never let anyone chase her out of the spotlight.