Confession: we kinda missed the Golden Globes last night on account of our unwillingness to put up with the hosts on the free PopSugar stream. But we are aware that everybody is talking about Jodie Foster‘s very personal “coming out” speech and that many fellow actresses (and Mel Gibson) were predictably moved to tears, so we figured we’d examine it from a PR perspective. Here’s the full clip in case you didn’t catch it:

Well, she certainly did it with style, didn’t she? We love how she danced around “the question” while letting everyone know the answer.

Next issue:

This was, of course, a planned event–and a big one in a business notoriously obsessed with public relations. As Jodie put it, she wasn’t “quite as nervous” as her publicist aboutthe  speech, but she clearly went on stage aiming to set the record straight. We also love the fact that she said every big celebrity is now expected to “honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime time reality show”. Snarky but true.

Seriously, though: hard to imagine too many other actors making a speech like this and pulling it off. We’re not quite sure whether Foster is saying “goodbye to all that”, but she certainly owned the industry last night. She is over it, and she made everyone else in the room look like nervous teenagers at prom.

Our conclusion? Of course all actors and other big-name personas need PR people like us. If this week’s TL; DR New York Times profile of Lindsay Lohan taught us anything, it’s that lives lived in public must be carefully controlled lest they spin out of control. So yes, publicists and press releases and choreographed events are a necessary part of the business.

But sometimes you just have to go out there and do it your own damn self.