The Golden Globes were distributed on Sunday, but, as the parties wound down, nobody was talking much about the awards themselves.
Yes, Argo pulled off something of an upset by beating Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln to best dramatic picture. True, the Lincoln team must have been disappointed to pick up just one Globe: Daniel Day-Lewis’s best actor award. But the bookies still have the historical epic ahead in the Oscar stakes. Most of the chatter had to do with Jodie Foster’s agreeably rambling acceptance of the Cecil B DeMille award for lifetime achievement.
The words “coming out” were immediately attached to the statement. Was it really that? She has thanked her (same-sex) partner in earlier speeches. Everybody with ears and a brain knew that Foster had been in a long-term gay relationship.
But this was Foster’s most unambiguous acknowledgment of her sexuality to date. Halfway through her speech, Foster, now 50, sideswiped the audience by saying: “I have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public.”
You didn’t need powers of divination to guess where this was heading. Foster went on to describe Cydney Bernard, the woman with whom she raised two sons, as “one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most-beloved BFF of 20 years.” Hang on. Ski buddy? How appalling!