Terry Gross

But I'm wondering, you know, you had played, even as a kid, and certainly in Taxi Driver, like girls who could talk back, girls who could talk kind of tough, girls who could challenge.

Did that help you in life?

Because you knew what it was to talk that way.

Can you give an example of a time you slammed the door and said, show me your license?

That's really interesting.

We have to take another short break here.

If you're just joining us, my guest is Jodie Foster, and her new film, which is in French, is called A Private Life.

It opens January 16th in select theaters and on the 30th more widely.

We'll be right back.

This is Fresh Air.

So I want to go back to 2013 in our retrospective when you won a Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award.

And this acceptance speech was a speech that a lot of people took notice of.

So I'm just going to play this clip.

Sure.

Okay, here we go.

Okay, so it's... Wow, that was a lot.

Yeah.

But you really tease that as like, I'm going to come out as gay.

And I really like what you said about people expect you, if you're in the public eye and you're gay, that you have to issue a press release about it.

And was that in part because you're a private person and that's the way you are, but also because you didn't want to come out as gay because it would have inspired so much gossip and distraction and maybe a loss of roles?