Jodie Foster's Chiron Return

Jodie Foster is one of the few movie stars who has managed to transmute her juvenile brilliance into adult excellence. Now, she's 50 and still at the top of her profession. It's a remarkable career.

But just as remarkable has been her determination to keep her private life out of the public eye. This must have been hard to achieve. So why in her 51st year, did Foster decide to go public about her sexual orientation? 


Her "coming out" speech at the Golden Globes a couple of days ago has caused a flurry of commentary, even though there's been no subterfuge about her relationships. She's just never talked about being gay.

Foster is powerfully Scorpio, fixed water, ice. She has Neptune (film), Venus (beauty), Mercury (communications), and the Sun (her core) all in the sign that keeps secrets. Her Sun is on the cusp of the most hidden house of all, the 12th, so while she displayed all her talent to the world in those elevated planets, she kept her real self concealed.

On the night of the Golden Globes, the North Node conjuncted Foster's Mercury (speech-making) in Scorpio. She may be naturally a very truthful person, but her sense of self-preservation up until now has kept her quiet. This nodal transit happens only once every 18 years. Last time round, Foster was co-funding a short film called Trevor about a gay teenager's sexual coming of age.

Venus, female sexuality, and Pluto, the truth, are currently conjuncting in Foster's first house of personal identity. For a few years now, Uranus, the planet of awakening, has been jiggling around Foster's angle of home. She separated from her long-term partner in 2008, which may have precipitated a lot more upheaval and change.

1977

But the really interesting transit in Foster's chart is Neptune to Jupiter. Her natal Jupiter is in Pisces, the most compassionate placement for the planet. It's in it's own sign traditionally. It's exactly opposite that perfectionist, craftsman's Moon in Virgo. Foster is great at portraying characters who are hard, but vulnerable underneath. (Silence of the Lambs, The Accused, Nell, Taxi Driver, Little Man Tate) That opposition is her crafted emotion projecting onto a wider screen (Jupiter in Pisces).

Natally, her Moon is closely conjunct Uranus. She feels like an outsider, so it's not surprising that her most successful roles have been as outsiders. That's also quite a gay placement. It's hard to tell someone's sexual orientation from their chart; indeed some astrologers would argue that you can't see it. But Uranus, either in relation to the Lights or Venus or in the right house, crops up a lot. It's about being different, see, having unconventional relationships.

1994

That Uranus-Moon is right out at the top of her chart, in the public eye, exposed, if it were not for that distracting Venus-Neptune conjunction in the 11th.

Transiting Lilith, the dark moon that makes us dare, was forming a trine from eloquent Gemini, exactly to Foster's own Lilith in charming Libra and the 10th house of fame and honours on the night of her speech. It must have taken some courage for her to stand up and tell the truth.

But some activists would argue that Foster should have come out of the closet a long time ago. After all, young gay women could do with a role model who looks great in a gown, and wield a huge amount of power in Tinsel Town. So it's interesting that Neptune is conjuncting that Jupiter and opposing the Moon-Uranus. That part of her character is being expanded. It's gone public. And maybe she finally felt that her compassion could make a difference.

2011

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Foster is having her Chiron Return. 

The Wounded Healer has come back to the place it was when she was born. This happens once in a lifetime. The Chiron Return is indeed the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Here's what Foster said at the Golden Globes: "This feels like the end of one era and the beginning of something else. Scary and exciting and now what? Well, I may never be up on this stage again, on any stage for that matter. Change, you gotta love it."

Exactly Ms F.

Foster's Chiron is conjunct her Jupiter and opposed to the Uranus-Moon. Being in the public eye was a wound. So she split her life into strict parts. Saturn is at a quincunx to the Uranus-Moon, which suggests awkwardness and in her case, arbitrary rules. It's strong and fixed in Aquarius too. So her rule was not to speak about her private life at all. Strict, strict boundaries.

This speech is her own poetic way of bringing those two parts of her fame and her authentic, gay self together. Transiting Saturn is squaring her natal Saturn – it's time to break those old rules – and trining her natal Chiron.

Foster is taking ownership of her own identity. I wonder if that means she won't be acting any more.

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