In “Taxi Driver,” Cybill Shepherd plays Betsy, the campaign worker who becomes the object of Travis Bickle’s fascination.
Betsy works for Senator Charles Palantine, a presidential candidate whose campaign office attracts Travis’s attention. Travis is immediately drawn to her, partly because he imagines her as an idealized, pure figure amid the corruption and violence he believes surround him.
Their relationship quickly becomes uncomfortable. Travis takes Betsy to a pornographic movie, assuming she will respond as he does, and she ends the date and rejects further contact. The episode exposes Travis’s inability to understand ordinary social boundaries and helps reveal his increasingly distorted worldview.
Betsy is often confused with Iris, the teenage sex worker played by Jodie Foster. Iris is another major character in the film, but she is not played by Shepherd. “Taxi Driver,” directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 1976, stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle.