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John Hinckley Jr. sent well wishes to Jodie Foster 45 years after shooting President Ronald Reagan to impress the actress.
“I just wish Jodie Foster well, you know,” Hinckley Jr., 71, said in Entertainment Weekly’s preview clip of his interview on “The Mark Joseph Show” airing Wednesday
He added, “I don’t really see her movies, but I wish her well, and I know she’s doing quite well. And that’s all I can say is just, I wish Jodie well, and I hope she has a good life.”
Page Six has reached out to Foster’s rep for comment.
On March 30, 1981, Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate Reagan as the then-president left the Hilton Hotel in Washington DC, as a way of impressing Foster after becoming obsessed with her from watching “Taxi Driver.”
Reagan suffered serious injuries during the assassination attempt, including a punctured lung and a broken rib. The .22 caliber bullet had narrowly missed his heart.
The attack injured three others, including former White House press secretary James Brady, who became permanently paralyzed. He later died in 2014.
Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 and spent over 34 years committed at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. He was released in 2022.
On the podcast, Hinckley Jr. revealed to Joseph — who directed the 2024 film “Reagan” starring Dennis Quaid as the late president — what his goal for the shooting was.
“I wanted to have a union with Jodie Foster and live the rest of my life with her and all these things that, of course, were delusional,” he explained.
“But I was believing those things at the time, so the best outcome would have been a union with Jodie Foster.”
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After Joseph noted that Mark David Chapman went to jail for fatally shooting John Lennon in 1980, Hinckley Jr. explained that while he figured he’d be locked up, he hoped he’d still end up with Foster.
“I thought she would, you know, after things settled down, join me wherever I was,” he shared. “I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be in jail or the hospital or what after things settled down. I had this notion that she was gonna join me wherever I was.”
Foster, now 63, told People in 2024 how the assassination attempt on Reagan impacted her life.
“The world fell apart, there were Secret Service people everywhere, I had bodyguards, and I had to be taken to a safe house,” she recalled.
The “Silence of the Lambs” actress also revealed that while performing in a play shortly after the shooting, a guy sitting in the front row brought a gun to the show.
“It was a traumatic moment,” she said, “and I’ve never admitted that maybe that has something to do with how I never wanted to do a play again. It was all part of that.”
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