Did She or Didn't She?

Actress and producer Jodie Foster was just making a thank-you speech, right? Depends on who's doing the reporting.

On December 4 the two-time Academy Award winner accepted the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at the annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 breakfast in Beverly Hills. Foster attending this kind of industry event is hardly news outside Hollywood, but her acceptance speech garnered global headlines when she thanked “my beautiful Cydney,” apparently referring to Cydney Bernard, the woman long assumed to be her partner.

Foster recognized her agent, publicists, lawyer, and mother before thanking Bernard, “who sticks with me through the rotten and the bliss,” she said.

The film and television website IMDB.com lists Bernard as a production coordinator, manager, or supervisor on a half-dozen films and television movies—including the 1993 feature Sommersby, which starred Foster. Both of Foster’s children, Charles and Kit, have the middle name Bernard.

Foster's December 4 comments set off a rash of media coverage, with publications from South Africa to New Zealand reporting the words, but with widely varying interpretations of what they meant. The U.K.-based website Fametastic saw the statement as a sign that Foster “may be set to publicly confirm her relationship.” Other publications went further, with The Philadelphia Daily News declaring on December 15 that Foster “has officially announced she's gay.” The British tabloid Daily Mail reported on December 12 that Foster “has finally come out as a lesbian.” The Daily Mail also ran a photo of Foster and Bernard taken at the German premiere of her 2005 feature film Flightplan.

The coverage was not just in print. Cabler CNN added a video clip to its website on December 13 titled “Jodie Foster thanks gay partner” where celebrity columnist Kiki King said in an interview with one of the network’s anchors “of course she’s been with Cydney Bernard for over 14 years now, and she has two sons, presumably with Cydney playing a sort of parental role in that relationship, as well.”

Robert Thompson, a professor at the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said the reaction shows an evolution in the way media interprets comments by individuals that merely indicate sexuality.

“Once upon a time a comment like that would have gotten absolutely no remark, because so much of that stuff wasn’t being reported,” Thompson said. “It was so submerged. Now it’s gone in a completely different direction. I suppose what it still continues to indicate is, we are still obsessed by people’s sexuality, and [by] naming and reading all the clues.