Target of Fan Obsession
John Hinckley, Jr., became obsessed with Foster after watching Taxi Driver a number of times, and stalked her while she attended Yale, sending her love letters to her campus mail box and even talking to her on the phone. On March 30, 1981, he attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan (shooting and wounding Reagan and three others) and claimed his motive was to impress Foster, then a Yale freshman. The media stormed the Yale campus in April "like a cavalry invasion," and followed Foster relentlessly.
The incident caused Foster intense discomfort and reporters have been warned in advance not to bring up the subject in front of her; she has been known to walk out of interviews at the mention of Hinckley's name. In 1991, Foster canceled an interview with NBC's Today Show when she discovered Hinckley would be mentioned in the introduction. Foster's only public reactions to this were a press conference afterwards and an article titled "Why Me?" that she wrote for Esquire in December 1982. In that article she wrote that returning to work on the film Svengali with Peter O'Toole "made me fall in love with acting again" after the assassination attempt had shaken her confidence. In 1999, she discussed the experience with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes II.
Another man, Edward Richardson, followed Foster around Yale and planned to shoot her, but decided against it because she "was too pretty."
Read more about this topic: Jodie Foster
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