By Tom Leonard PUBLISHED: 20:38 EST, 15 January 2013 | UPDATED: 06:48 EST, 16 January 2013 Aside from a smattering of nervous laughter, the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel descended into silence on Sunday night  as Jodie Foster began a  speech that many Hollywood  observers have long believed she would never make. On stage to accept a Cecil B. DeMille  lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, she announced she had a ‘sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public’. In the rambling seven-minute speech that followed, Foster talked obliquely and sometimes even in the third person about a private life she has guarded fiercely for decades.
@highlight
The actress publicly addressed her sexuality for the first time as she accepted a Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award
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Albeit obliquely, Foster appeared to end years of speculation about her private life as she referred to her 'deep love' for ex Cydney Bernard
For several years, the two women wore matching eternity rings on their wedding fingers, and in December 2007 Foster first publicly acknowledged the relationship, gushing at a private awards ceremony speech about ‘my beautiful @placeholder, who sticks with me through the rotten and the bliss’.