Jodie Foster On Escaping Sexual Abuse As Child Star

Jodie Foster was just 3 years old when she kickstarted her acting career by starring in a Coppertone commercial back in the ’60s, and she has pretty much been working nonstop ever since.

Jodie’s first credited TV appearance was in an episode of Mayberry R.F.D. back in 1968, when she was 5 years old, and her feature film debut came the following year, at age 6. She continued to work throughout her childhood with appearances in TV shows like My Three Sons and Paper Moon while also starring in her fair share of movies, like the 1973 adaptation of Tom Sawyer, when she was 10.

However, it was 1976 that really saw Jodie thrive, with the child star leading not one but three now-classic movies: Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone, and the original Freaky Friday. Jodie was just 13 years old at the time, and she even hosted Saturday Night Live that same year, remaining the show’s youngest ever host until 1982, when Drew Barrymore broke her record at age 7.

Since then, Jodie has arguably become best known for her Oscar-winning performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs, with the now-63-year-old star widely regarded as one of the most esteemed actors in Hollywood.

Despite this, Jodie recently admitted that she never would have chosen acting for herself, branding it a “cruel job” that she was effectively forced into. Speaking at the Marrakech Film Festival, per Variety, Jodie said: “I would never have chosen to be an actor, I don’t have the personality of an actor. I’m not somebody that wants to dance on a table and, you know, sing songs for people.”

And now, in a new interview with the NPR podcast Fresh Air, Jodie has reflected on the fact that she was “saved” from Hollywood sexual abuse despite being in the industry from such a young age — and the star’s theory as to why she was spared has divided people online.

Speaking on the podcast, Jodie 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?”

“What I came to believe is that I had a certain amount of power by the time I was, like, 12,” she added, before referencing the 1977 Oscar nomination she received for Taxi Driver at age 14. “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. I could’ve ruined people’s careers, or I could’ve called ‘Uncle,’ so I wasn’t on the block.”

“It also might be just my personality, that I am a head-first person and I approach the world in a head-first way,” Jodie continued to theorize. “It’s very difficult to emotionally manipulate me because I don’t operate with my emotions on the surface. Predators use whatever they can in order to manipulate and get people to do what they want them to do. And that’s much easier when the person is younger, when the person is weaker, when a person has no power. That’s precisely what predatory behavior is about: using power in order to diminish people, in order to dominate them.”

Reacting to Jodie’s quotes on a Reddit forum, people were torn over what the star had said — with many pointing out that being abused isn’t necessarily reflective of a lack of power as they argued that the star was simply “lucky.”

“Love her but I am sorry, she was lucky. Many children with perceived power got abused, this is an arrogant take and I am surprised she positioned it like this,” one comment reads. However, another rebuked: “I’m sorry, why is this a bad thing for her to say? Do you think she’s saying it’s wonderful that lesser stars have less power to call out abusers? She is simply laying out her experience as someone who was more fortunate, and displaying why others may be facing the horrors of Hollywood. Am I missing something?”

“Gwyneth Paltrow should have been untouchable, too, but Weinstein still tried. I’m not sure predators ever truly think anyone is ‘untouchable’. All they see is a potential victim,” somebody else argued, seemingly referencing Gwyneth’s famous parents.

“I can understand her take on it, as a person unused to the ways that predators groom families and guardians as well as their targets. I feel like that she does not understand that it does not take much more than a single vigilant chaperone to make all the difference. She probably was blessed with both the distrustful personality that can make a target less vulnerable, and that there were people in her life who were no fools to the risks all around her,” another comment reads.

“Honestly kudos to her support system for making her feel this in control and autonomous,” one more wrote. “She got lucky.”