Jodie Foster says she never wanted to do a play again after her stalker came to the theater with a gun
John Hinckley Jr. had attempted to assassinate the president and was on the run.
Although Jodie Foster won two Best Actress Oscars before she was 30, in a new interview with Jodie Comer, Foster admits that she was never fell in love with acting and explained the traumatic reason she stayed away from doing live theater.
Foster hasn't spoken much publicly about John Hinckley Jr. and his attempt to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to impress the young Taxi Driver actress. But in the latest issue of Interview, Foster describes HIckley coming to a play she did in college with a gun, shortly after his assassination attempt.
"I’m finally able to admit that the one bit of theater I did when I was in college, there was so much trauma involved in it—well, just quickly, the play happened in two weekends, and I did the first weekend, and in between the first weekend and the second weekend, John Hinckley shot the president," Foster explained.
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"It was a long time ago. You probably don’t even know, but he shot him in order to impress me, and he had written letters to me, so it was a big moment in my life," she continued. "The world fell apart, there were Secret Service people everywhere, I had bodyguards, and I had to be taken to a safe house, and I was in the middle of these two weekends of this play, and I had the dumb idea of 'the show must go on.' So I was like, 'I have to do that second weekend.'"
Foster had just turned 18 and she noticed Hinckley in the front row both weekends she was doing the play.
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"I decided to, the whole play, yell, 'F--- you, motherf---er!' I just decided that I was going to use this guy," Foster said. "And then the next day, it was revealed that this particular guy had a gun, and he had brought it to the performance, and then he was on the run, and I was in a class, and the bodyguard guy came and threw me onto the ground while I was in the class, which was really embarrassing, because there were only 10 people there."
She added, "It was a traumatic moment, and I’ve never admitted that maybe that has something to do with how I never wanted to do a play again."
Comer, who won a Tony last year for her Broadway debut in Prima Facie, wonders if she might be able to persuade her fellow Jodie to go onstage again.
"I’ll be the first 80-year-old person to go onstage with my walker, perhaps," Foster quipped.
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