John Hinckley Jr has message for Jodie Foster 45 years after attempting to kill Ronald Reagan

John Hinckley Jr, who attempted to assassinate then-US President Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster, has opened up about his actions.

John Hinckley Jr. has shared a message to Jodie Foster over four decades after trying to assassinate Ronald Reagan.

The 71-year-old man attempted to assassinated the then-US President in 1981 in a bid to impress the Taxi Driver actress, and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity because being committed to a hospital.

Speaking 45 years later, Hinckley Jr told The Mark Joseph Show: “I just wish Jodie Foster well, you know.

“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.”

Hinckley had stalked Foster during her time at Yale, and on March 30, 1981, he fired six shots at Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Asked about his motive behind the assassination attempt, he said: “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.

“But I was believing those things at the time, so the best outcome would have been a union with Jodie Foster.”

Hinckley Jr believed Foster would “join” him after “things settled down”.

He added: “I thought she would, you know, after things settled down, join me wherever I was.

“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.”

Silence of the Lambs star Jodie previously revealed her side of the horrific experience.

She told Jodie Comer for Interview magazine: “”I’m finally able to admit that the one bit of theatre I did when I was in college, there was so much trauma involved in it—well, just quickly, the play happened in two weekends, and I did the first weekend, and in between the first weekend and the second weekend, John Hinckley shot the president… It was a huge moment.

“It was a long time ago. You probably don’t even know, but he shot him in order to impress me, and he had written letters to me, so it was a big moment in my life.

“The world fell apart, there were Secret Service people everywhere, I had bodyguards, and I had to be taken to a safe house, and I was in the middle of these two weekends of this play, and I had the dumb idea of ‘the show must go on.’

“So I was like, ‘I have to do that second weekend’. I’d just turned 18.”

Jodie opted to vent her frustrations by “using” one member of the audience – but discovered afterwards he had brought a gun to the show.

She continued: “There were people everywhere, cameras everywhere, and there was a guy in the front row, and I had noticed that it was the second night that he’d been there, and I decided to, the whole play, yell, ‘F*** you, motherf*****!’

I just decided that I was going to use this guy.

“And then the next day, it was revealed that this particular guy had a gun, and he had brought it to the performance, and then he was on the run, and I was in a class, and the bodyguard guy came and threw me onto the ground while I was in the class, which was really embarrassing, because there were only 10 people there.

“It was a traumatic moment, 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. I talked myself into loving theatre and going to theatre, but somehow feeling like I couldn’t make that commitment to ever do it again.”