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Jodie Foster revealed that trauma led to her to shelve doing theater not long after a stalker, John Hinckley Jr., looked to impress her by attempting to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Foster — in a conversation with Jodie Comer for Interview Magazine — admitted that she dealt with “so much trauma” when she performed in a Yale University production of “Getting Out” around the time of the shooting.
The assassination attempt wounded Reagan and three others including White House press secretary James Brady, who later died of his injuries.
“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,” the two-time Oscar winner explained.
She referred to the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt by Hinckley, who was freed from court oversight in 2022, as a “big moment” in her life.
Foster said the world “fell apart” as she encountered Secret Service members, had bodyguards and “had to be taken to a safe house.”
“I had the dumb idea of ‘the show must go on.’ So I was like, ‘I have to do that second weekend,’” said Foster, who had just turned 18 at the time.
The “Taxi Driver” star, in a 1982 piece for Esquire, wrote that she wasn’t sure who she was “trying to impress” by doing the performances and she previously swore not to do theater during school in order to be “anonymous.”
She told Comer that she spotted people and cameras “everywhere” in the crowd before landing her eyes on a man who attended a previous performance.
Foster has previously described the man’s “emotionless stare” at the time and exuding something untrustworthy about him, so she focused her attention on him as she delivered a profane line.
“I decided to, the whole play, yell, ‘Fuck you, motherfucker!’ I just decided that I was going to use this guy,” said Foster, who later learned that the man had a gun, brought it to her performance and would then be “on the run.”
She later added, “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.”
Edward Richardson, who allegedly wrote to Foster, was arrested with a loaded firearm and later indicted on two counts of threatening Reagan’s life just over a week after Hinckley’s assassination attempt, according to UPI.
Foster described the situation involving the man, who she noted had been released on parole a year after his arrest, as 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,” she told Comer.