Failed Ronald Reagan Assassin John Hinckley Jr. Believes He Turned Jodie Foster Into a Lesbian

The man who attempted to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 thinks he's the reason Jodie Foster is a lesbian.

John Hinckley Jr. told an outlet that he speculates his failed assassination attempt — a move he believed would impress the A-list actress, whom he was obsessed with — turned her off to men completely.

Hinckley, 70, who's been promoting his new memoir, Who I Really Am, claimed Foster, 63, previously dated men before he tried to gun down the 40th POTUS.

The would-be assassin first became fixated on actress after he saw her play a child prostitute in the 1976 film Taxi Driver opposite Robert De Niro at just 12 years old.

When Foster was attending Yale University years later, Hinckley found out where her dorm was and got her telephone number from the college's registrar's office. He would ring her and slip poems under her door, but she rebuffed his advances.

Subsequently, with the movie's plot in mind, Hinckley believed he "could impress Jodie by killing the president." He convinced himself of this since De Niro's character in the film wants to shoot a presidential candidate but ends up killing men exploiting Foster's character instead, leaving her dazzled.

Traveling from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., the wannabe musician shot at Reagan six times, wounding the president and others before the crowd beat him up, and he was taken to jail.

Hinckley was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity and served over 40 years in a psychiatric care facility under court supervision.

While there were rumors that Foster dated actor Russell Crowe at some point in the 1990s, she went on to have a relationship with film producer Cydney Bernard from 1993 to 2008. The former couple share two sons.

The Silence of the Lambs star later married her current wife, photographer Alexandra Hedison, in 2014, after less than a year together.

When asked about Hedison at a premiere in October 2025, she shared that they do "a lot of chatting" and "laughing," and that they're very supportive of one another's careers. "I think we're both in awe of each other," she shared.

While the couple keeps their relationship very private, they do often attend premieres together, and Hedison occasionally uploads photos of herself and Foster on Instagram.

In September 2025, she posted a few shots of herself and the Panic Room actress at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, where Foster was launching a new film.

The year prior, she shared a snap of them posing on the red carpet together at the SAG Awards, calling Foster her "favorite date" in the caption.