Jodie Foster on impostor and uncertainty feelings
“I always feel like something of an impostor. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Jodie Foster made that comment recently when she was guest of honor at the Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment Power 100 breakfast. She is a recipient of the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award.
A highly accomplished actor-director-producer, Foster said, “I don’t feel very powerful. I feel fragile… unsure, struggling to figure it all out.”
According to an Associated Press news story Dec 5, she characterized herself as a “professional” and a “gentleman,” but also said about working in entertainment for 42 years, “there’s no way you can do that and not be as nutty as a fruitcake.
“I always feel like something of an impostor. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I suppose that’s my one little secret, the secret of my success.”
Years ago, she was also experiencing these feelings, saying in a tv interview [CBS, 1995] that before her Oscar-winning performance in “The Accused” she felt “like an impostor, faking it, that someday they’d find out I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t. I still don’t.”
Those quotes are in my article Gifted Women: Identity and Expression.
These feelings are, of course, not exclusive to women; many of us men also are beset - but there may be more social pressure on girls and women.
Foster has found a positive value in her experience, but that may not be the case for most people.
Here is a definition from the Women’s Studies Encyclopedia, Revised and Expanded Edition, 1999, from an article by Emily Rothman:
“The Imposter Phenomenon is an internal experience of intellectual phoniness that seems to be prevalent among high-achieving persons, with particularly deleterious effects on women…
“It is an emotionally debilitating condition characterized by persistent and unwarranted anxiety about achievement, dread of evaluation, fear of failure and exposure, inability to internalize success, and lack of enjoyment of accomplishment and achievement.”
Related articles:
Internal barriers, personal issues, and decisions faced by gifted and talented females, by Sally M. Reis, Ph.D.
10 Steps to Overcome the Impostor Syndrome, by Dr. Valerie Young
Also see the pages Impostor syndrome, and Impostor articles books.
