Receiving the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award during the Golden Globes telecast is usually a time for some  benignly pleasant remarks. Jodie Foster, however, used the platform Sunday night to publicly address her sexuality and private life.

Introduced by Robert Downey Jr., who captured the freewheeling, slightly needling spirit one might more typically expect, Foster declared what “feels like the end of one era and the beginning of something else.” The actor-director seized the moment for an obliquely playful, complex and emotional speech in the middle of an evening otherwise reserved for glitzy Hollywood puffery.

In her spellbinding remarks that clocked in at more than 6½ minutes, Foster began by jokingly referring to a “Saturday Night Live” character, proclaiming “I’m 50!” “I’m 50! “I’m 50!” before mentioning how she felt like the “prom queen” in the room that night.

Speaking of her lifelong place in the public eye, some 47 years in show business, she noted that privacy is the thing she values above all else, which is why she has never before addressed the issue of her sexuality.

Foster never actually used the words “lesbian” or “gay,” but she said she did her “coming out” about “a thousand years ago back in the Stone Age” to family, friends and those she worked with. She then paid tribute to Cydney Bernard, whom  she called, “one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life… Thank you Cyd, I am so proud of our modern family,” including their two sons, Charlie and Kit.

As if that wasn’t enough news for one speech, Foster seemed to announce her retirement, though she pulled back from that idea later backstage, when she continued her remarks with, “I may never be up on this stage again, on any stage, for that matter. Change, you gotta love it.”

Read the story linked above for more background. What’s your take on Foster’s speech? If you saw it as a “coming out” moment, do you think it will be a key moment in society’s view of homosexuality? Or did it mean less in your view?