Actress and director Jodie Foster poses during the ceremony honoring her with a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, in Hollywood, California. - AFP
LOS ANGELES: Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster was awarded a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame on Wednesday -- and revealed she was banned from the glitzy thoroughfare as a child.
The veteran actress was presented with the 2,580th star on the walk by longtime friend Kristen Stewart outside the iconic TCL Chinese Theater in the heart of Tinseltown.
“I grew up probably ten blocks from here, off Cahuenga, and had to pass this street every day as I was on my way to school,” she told fans, some of whom had been waiting six hours to catch a glimpse of the star.
“And my mother said if she ever found us on Hollywood Boulevard, we shouldn’t bother coming home.”
Foster, 53, is best known for playing FBI agent Clarice Starling opposite Anthony Hopkins’ serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 horror-thriller “The Silence of the Lambs.”
She won a best actress Oscar for that role, having picked up her first Academy Award, also for best actress, for “The Accused” three years earlier.
Her other credits during a more than four-decade career range from Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” in 1976 to 2002’s “Panic Room” -- in which she starred with Stewart -- and sci-fi blockbuster “Elysium.”
“Twilight” star Stewart said she already decided Foster was her favorite actress before they worked together, after seeing Foster’s controversial performance as a teenage prostitute at the age of 12 in “Taxi Driver.”
“There is nothing self-serving about her. She cares about people and she’s quite the opposite of the type of person that is gravitated towards being an actress,” the 26-year-old said.
Proud mother
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has been criticized in the past for not awarding Foster a star decades ago, but has pointed out that recipients have to be nominated and agree on a date for the ceremony.
Foster said she’d always dreamed of receiving the honor but was waiting for the opportunity to celebrate her star “as a director.”
Foster has directed three films, with “Money Monster,” a hostage thriller starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, due for release on May 13.
Foster paid tribute to her mother, Evelyn, who suffers from dementia and was unable to attend the ceremony.
“But there have been many other mothers in my life... women that are proud of you for all that you have done,” she said.
“But the especially nice thing is to be someone else’s mother, and to see them be here and be proud. And I get to say that I’m kind of Kristen Stewart’s mother, which is a pretty awesome thing to be.
“It’s just so awesome to have seen her grow up. I have to say that if I was ever going to be locked in an eight foot by 15 foot room with someone, I was really glad that it was Kristen Stewart.”
Foster, who made a speech at the 2013 Golden Globes widely seen as her official coming-out, married photographer girlfriend Alexandra Hedison in April 2014.
She has two sons, Charlie and Christopher, with ex-partner Cydney Bernard. - AFP
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