Jodie Foster was ‘shocked’ by stories of rape victims early in her career

Jodie Foster may have earned an Oscar nomination for playing a real-life rape survivor in “The Accused” (for which she ultimately won) as well as a child prostitute in “Taxi Driver,” but now the actress challenges the dominant trend throughout Hollywood history of male screenwriters relying on stormy storylines to create female characters.

Foster told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “still shocked” by how many storylines included a story about rape of women.

“For most of my career, I was always shocked by the fact that so many scripts I read, the female character’s only motivation was that she had been traumatized by rape. That seemed to be the only motivation the male writers could come up with for why women did certain things,” Foster said. “‘She’s pretty moody, yeah, there’s definitely rape in her past.'”

Foster theorized that male screenwriters could only “understand” the singular experience of women seen as victims. The easiest way to victimize a woman is to attack her on the page, according to Foster.

“Rape or sexual assault seemed to be the only kind of sinister and important emotional story they could understand in women. And I didn’t take it personally,” she said. “But once I got big enough, I think I had a responsibility to say, ‘You’re not always going to get the character most fully fleshed out feminine, but maybe there’s an opportunity for us to work together and create something that way?’

Foster even recently starred in season 4 of “True Detective” as a police officer investigating crimes against. The actress highlighted how the industry itself has adapted since its half-century in Hollywood, particularly when it comes to diversifying casts and crews for greater gender balance.

“I’ve never been happier as an actor than when I turned 60. There’s just a kind of contentment about not just focusing on myself and walking onto a set saying, ‘How can my experience or whatever wisdom I have, how can it serve you?’ ” Foster said. “Bringing this to the table is not only more fun and more liberating, but it’s also easy. It’s very easy because you’re not anxious about things that maybe younger kids worry about.

She added: “Little by little, as women came onto the sets, it was just a fantastic thing. There would be another woman on set, then there would be two, then maybe three. And it kept growing – except there were never any female directors. But there’s this misconception that actresses are somehow against each other or don’t like each other or whatever. Even this year, going to the different events (for “Nyad”), it’s still very pleasant because the women really want others to succeed.”