Jodie Foster hasn't appeared in a play for over 40 years as a result of a "traumatic" incident during a college production.
The actress was horrified to learn John Hinckley Jr. had attempted to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan in a bid to impress her. Despite the incident — for which the shooter was eventually acquitted on mental health grounds and committed to a hospital — causing her world to "fall apart", Jodie was determined the Yale University show must go on.
Speaking to Jodie Comer for Interview magazine, she said: "I'm finally able to admit that the one bit of theatre I did when I was in college, there was so much trauma involved in it — well, just quickly, 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... It was a huge moment.
"It was a long time ago. You probably don't even know, but he shot him in order to impress me, and he had written letters to me, so it was a big moment in my life.
"The world fell apart, there were Secret Service people everywhere, I had bodyguards, and I had to be taken to a safe house, and I was in the middle of these two weekends of this play, and I had the dumb idea of 'the show must go on.'
"So I was like, 'I have to do that second weekend'. I'd just turned 18.
Jodie opted to vent her frustrations by "using" one member of the audience — but discovered afterwards he had brought a gun to the show.
She continued: "There were people everywhere, cameras everywhere, and there was a guy in the front row, and I had noticed that it was the second night that he'd been there, and I decided to, the whole play, yell, 'F*** you, motherf*****!'
"I just decided that I was going to use this guy.
"And then the next day, it was revealed that this particular guy had a gun, and he had brought it to the performance, and then he was on the run, and 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.
"It was 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.
"It was all part of that. I talked myself into loving theatre and going to theatre, but somehow feeling like I couldn't make that commitment to ever do it again."
But the 61-year-old star won't rule out getting on stage again one day.
She quipped: "I'll be the first 80-year-old person to go onstage with my walker, perhaps."
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