Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster decided it was time to come out as gay when she collected the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 70th Golden Globes Awards, to celebrate that special achievement in a "special way."
Thee actor/director/producer received the lifetime achievement award in 2013 for her amazing body of work in film, and used the platform of her acceptance speech, before the Hollywood elite and the world, to reveal that she was gay, adding that she had come out a "thousand years ago back in the Stone Age" but in her private life.
Foster, 55, thinks back on that night with much pride and honor, as it was the most empowering way to allow the world into her personal life and know who she truly was.
"It's been a while, hasn't it? It was a wonderful evening and a great honor for me to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is a recognition of your career, not just one thing," she told the Italian publication IO Donna. "I wanted to celebrate it in a special way, because it marked a moment of transition in my life – between the past and the future … The message was quite clear. I am absolutely grateful to have this crazy job and to get to have a wonderful life as an artist. I've been doing it since I was three, it was hard, but it was also a blessing. Both things."
The "Silence of the Lambs" star, who is a mother two sons Charlie, 19, and Kit, 16, will be back up on the big screen in her first movie role in five years in "Hotel Artemis," since spending some time behind the lens, where she has shown much talent, as a director.
Foster added that now that she is older the roles she'll play will be different, and that she realizes there is immense pressure for women to consider surgery to try and maintain a certain Hollywood Image, but she does not subscribe to this thinking, explaining:
"This is a question that arises after 40. Over the years the face reflects, in a crude way, the tragedy and the comedy of your life. I like it, I'm not a vain type, and I've never based my career on my looks, I've always considered myself above all as an actor. It intrigues me to see how my skin and face changes, I do nothing to stop that process. I have had a full, rich life, and it always encourages me to play characters that have depth, that have meaning."