{“title”:”Foster Exposes Child Star Shield”,”body”:”Jodie Foster has revealed how early fame protected her from the predatory behavior that derailed many young actors.
The 63-year-old Oscar winner told NPR that by the time she earned her first Academy Award nomination for 1976’s Taxi Driver, she had already crossed into a rare category: minors with enough clout to fight back.
“I was part of a different category of people that had power and I was too dangerous to touch,” Foster said in the interview timed to the film’s 50th anniversary. “I could’ve ruined people’s careers or I could’ve called ‘Uncle,’ so I wasn’t on the block.”
At a Glance
– Jodie Foster landed her first Oscar nod at age 13 for Taxi Driver
– She credits early professional clout with shielding her from industry abuse
– Predators target the powerless, she says, and she already wielded leverage
– Why it matters: Her account spotlights how status, not policies, often determines safety in Hollywood
## The Power That Changed Everything
Foster began acting at age 5, so by the time she played Iris in Martin Scorsese’s classic she had nearly a decade of set experience. That longevity, she believes, gave her a form of armor.
“I’ve really had to examine that, like, how did I get saved?” she said, noting that peers have since shared “terrible experiences” of harassment and assault. “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?”
Her answer: measurable leverage in an industry that prizes box-office returns and awards cachet.
## Personality as Protection
Beyond résumé strength, Foster said her analytical nature made her a harder target.
“I am a head-first person and I approach the world in a head-first way,” she explained. “It’s very difficult to emotionally manipulate me because I don’t operate with my emotions on the surface.”
She described classic predatory tactics-using power to “diminish people”-and noted the calculus shifts when the intended victim already wields influence.
“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.”
## Survival Skills That Last a Lifetime
Foster told NPR that decades of controlling her emotions for roles forged resilience she still relies on.
“I think there’s a part of me that has been made resilient by what I’ve done for a living and has been able to control my emotions in order to do that in a role,” she said.
Yet the same coping mechanisms can calcify. “When you’re older, those survival skills get in the way, and you have to learn how to ditch them \[when\] they’re not serving you anymore.”
## Key Takeaways
– Early success placed Foster in an unusually protected tier of child performers
– She links industry power dynamics directly to vulnerability
– Emotional self-regulation, learned for acting, doubled as a defense
– Even advantageous survival tactics require re-evaluation later in life”,”meta_description”:”Jodie Foster tells NPR how early Oscar fame created a power buffer against predators.”,”categories”:[“Breaking News”,”Celebrity News”]}
