Jodie Foster has some praise for Gen Z while applauding Bella Ramsey's 'authenticity'

Jodie Foster may have some beef with Gen Z as a whole, but the actor had only positive things to say about 20-year-old nonbinary star Bella Ramsey, who she believes shows the world "the possibility of real freedom."

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Foster shared in a recent interview with The Guardian that she specifically requested to meet Ramsey when attending the Elle magazine Women in Hollywood celebration last month. The event was significant, she said, because the publication's fashion and pop culture content "means it’s determining who represents us."

"[The organizers] are very proud of themselves because they’ve got every ethnicity, and I’m like, yeah, but all the attendees are still wearing heels and eyelashes," Foster told the outlet. "There are other ways of being a woman, and it’s really important for people to see that. And Bella, who gave the best speech, was wearing the most perfect suit, beautifully tailored, and a middle parting and no makeup.”

Foster added that she feels "compelled" to do "a lot of reaching out to young actresses" to offer her mentorship, as she found it "hard growing up" as a woman in the entertainment industry. When asked if she could have made Ramsey's fashion choices in her earlier years, Foster said: “No, because we weren’t free. Because we didn’t have freedom."

Ramsey, who stars in the hit HBO series The Last of Us, came out as nonbinary in January, 2023, telling The New York Times that their gender has "always been very fluid." The young actor has long spoken out in defense of the show's diverse LGBTQ+ storylines.

Foster, for her part, recently starred in Nyad, the biopic of lesbian swim legend Diana Nyad. She previously told The Advocate that "there’s something incredibly beautiful about two women of a certain age who, for whatever reason, didn’t have children, didn’t end up in love partnerships."

Foster continued to say that Ramsey's gender-nonconforming style and "authenticity" is breaking down barriers not just for LGBTQ+ people, but for women and the feminist movement at large.

"And hopefully that’s what the vector of authenticity that’s happening offers – the possibility of real freedom," she said. "We had other things that were good. And I would say: I did the best I could for my generation. I was very busy understanding where I fitted in and where I wanted to be in terms of feminism. But my lens wasn’t wide enough. I lived in an incredibly segregated world.”