Truth rating: 10
10:38 am, August 15th, 2012
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Jodie Foster has had enough of the intense media scrutiny surrounding Kristen Stewart.
In a lengthy piece written for The Daily Beast, Foster, who co-starred with Stewart in 2002′s Panic Room, slams the obsessive way the media and paparazzi have fixated on the Twilight star.
Foster begins, “We’ve all seen the headlines at the check-out counter. ‘Kristen Stewart Caught.’ We’ve all thumbed the glossy pages here and there. ‘Kris and Rob a couple?’ We all catch the snaps. ‘I like that dress. I hate the hair. Cute couple. Bad shoes.’”
The Oscar winner acknowledges that building up young, famous people only to tear them down is nothing new, adding, “But we seldom consider the childhoods we unknowingly destroy in the process.”
Foster points out that when she began acting 46 years ago, “You could still manage to reach for a star-powered career and have the authenticity of a private life” — something she doesn’t think is the case today.
She writes, “If I were a young actor or actress starting my career today in the new era of social media and its sanctioned hunting season, would I survive? Would I drown myself in drugs, sex, and parties? Would I be lost?”
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“If I were a young actor today I would quit before I started,” says Foster, adding that she doubts she could “survive it emotionally.”
She adds, “I would only hope that someone who loved me, really loved me, would put their arm around me and lead me away to safety.”
Foster recalls meeting a then-11-year-old, playful Stewart on the Panic Room set, and says, “I grew to love that kid.”
But Foster sees the paparazzi’s damaging influence on Stewart.
“A beautiful young woman strides down the sidewalk alone, head down, hands drawn into fists,” writes Foster. “She’s walking fast, darting around huge men with black cameras thrusting at her mouth and chest. ‘Kristen, how do you feel?’ ‘Smile Kris!’ ‘Hey, hey, did you get her?’ ‘I got her. I got her!’ The young woman doesn’t cry. F**k no. She doesn’t look up. She’s learned. She keeps her head down, her shades on, fists in her pockets. Don’t speak. Don’t look. Don’t cry.”
While “public horrors” pass, says Foster, “You are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind.”
“You trust less. You calculate your steps. You survive. Hopefully in the process you don’t lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and — finally — the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don’t let them take that away from you,” writes the Hollywood veteran.
What do you think of Foster’s comments?
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