Jodie Foster is not ready to walk out into the sunset, thank you very much. After delivering a powerful, news-making speech at the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills on Sunday Jan. 13 -- in which the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award winner acknowledged that she's gay and seemed to hint at retirement -- Foster, 50, clarified her statements to reporters in the Green Room at the Beverly Hilton.

"I could never stop acting. You'd have to drag me behind, like, a team of horses," the Silence of the Lambs star insisted. "No, I'm not retiring from acting. And, you know, I'd like to be directing tomorrow . . . I'm actually more into it than I have ever been." Foster, who has been acting since she was a toddler, explained that the point of her speech was "that people change. Change is important. And, you know, hopefully I'll be doing different things than I did when I was three years old and six years old and ten years old and 20 years old . . . My work is evolving."

As for the more personal aspects of the address, in which Foster mentioned her former female partner and explained she "came out a million years ago" in private? "The speech kind of speaks for itself. It's a big, long career, and it's not just a career; it's friendships and relationships . . . I feel like I am graduating from something . . . And it's a big moment, and I wanted to say, you know, what's most in my heart."

Foster, mom to sons Charlie and Kit, added that she wasn't worried about regretting her frank disclosure the morning after. "It's an expression of who I am and what I'm thinking and feeling." The Accused actress also raised a few eyebrows (as she has in the past) when she acknowledged her close friend, the ever-controversial, volatile Mel Gibson**, in her speech. (Gibson, 57, looked on tearfully in the audience.)

"I know Mel Gibson extremely well, and he's somebody that I love and that I have worked with and that I respect, and it's not difficult to say that. You know, it's very easy to say that. My — the man that I know is a true and loyal friend, and considerate, loving," she said of Gibson. Over the summer, Foster also spoke up for her former Panic Room costar Kristen Stewart at the height of her cheating scandal. "I think it's important that when people are struggling, that you not run away from them if you love them. Kristen, I mean, I look at the room tonight, you know, Kristen Stewart and Claire Danes**, Jennifer Lawrence, all these young women that I worked with who basically were child actors like I was a child actor, and then I feel very protective of them, because even though I think I have managed to get through the process relatively sanely, I had my scars, and I hope to be in some ways a member of their family that's out there protecting them."

Foster's biggest shock of all: That she's still working in Hollywood. "You know, from the time I was little, my mom prepared me for the fact that my career would be over by the time I was 18 . . . I am very surprised that I ended up doing the same job that I did from the time I was three!"

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Jodie Foster: I'm Not Retiring, Coming Out Speech "Speaks for Itself"