Jane Fonda: ‘I’m 80! I keep pinching myself. I can’t believe it!’
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Jane Fonda is as outspoken, mischievous and political as ever.
She talks to Sophie Heawood about racism, cosmetic surgery
and the joys of working again with Robert Redford
‘Oh, I just feel damn lucky. I retired for 15 years. I left at 50 and came back at 65’: Jane Fonda.
Arthur Mola/Invision/AP
Jane Fonda has ruined me. I never want to interview anyone under the age of 80 again. Specifically, I never want to interview anyone who isn’t 80, and who doesn’t phone me for a catch-up call from a limo in Cannes, in which they are being driven to the airport, having gone to a deeply glamorous film festival party the night before and now finding themselves, as Fonda puts it delicately, “slightly hungover”. Fonda isn’t even hugely interested in Cannes these days, not like back in the day “when people wore their own clothes and went there to talk about movies”.
No, she’s hungover in the limo, but wants to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement; about what she has recently learned of the mass incarceration of African-Americans in her country and how it isn’t enough for white women like her to be empathetic. They have to stand up and make this stop, because America is a country built on slavery and it isn’t over yet.
It’s a continuation of the conversation that began a few days previously, when I met her backstage at the Ellen DeGeneres chat show in Los Angeles. Fonda was preparing to promote her new film, Book Club, in which she plays one of four women who have reached a certain age, read Fifty Shades of Grey in their book club, and decided to do something about their passions. The link between spicing up your sex life and committing to ending gross inequality might not be an obvious one, but she explains that Book Club is about female solidarity and women having each other’s backs, and so is much of her “feminist activism”. Even though, when she first got interested in politics, she had just starred in the 1968 erotic sci-fi film Barbarella “and I took a lot of heat on it from feminists. The new women’s movement was in its early stages and there was a lot of…” she adopts a comically stern voice: “‘How do you feel making a movie that exploits women, like Barbarella?’ You’d kind of want to say: ‘Well, honey, nobody forced me.’ But,” she concedes, “it wasn’t much fun to make it.”
Fonda’s small, white, fluffy dog Tulear is perched beside her. She actually wanted to name the dog Barbarella, but her daughter Vanessa, whose father, Roger Vadim, directed the film, wasn’t keen.
Page turner: starring in Book Club with Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen.
Allstar/Paramount Pictures
If Book Club is a sort of geriatric Sex and the City, then Fonda plays the Samantha character, a leopardskin-clad businesswoman who schedules sex and won’t commit. “Vivian is sassy, she doesn’t want any emotional entanglements, and that was kind of fun.” Fonda explains that back in the early 20th century, “before there were the Nielsen ratings or whatever, the censor, there were actresses such as Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck and Mae West playing dangerous women – the parts they played were like guys. Then puritanism crept in. But I think there are going to be more women-centric movies, like Book Club, now. A lot of these movies are doing well, and I don’t think this is a phase – I think this is it.”
Jane Fonda was born in 1937, the daughter of the actor Henry Fonda, and while her life was socially privileged, her home life was agony, and her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, killed herself in a psychiatric hospital. (Fonda was 12 and only found out that her mother’s death was suicide from a movie magazine – nobody ever spoke to her about it.) Jane herself was also sexually abused and in her memoirs she writes movingly about the concept of disembodiment – how it took her until the age of 62 to fully inhabit her own body.
Her marriage to Ted Turner had just ended, “and I was single again and I realised… I’m not scared,” she says of it now. “I was alone in the house, looking out through my own eyes and I could live inside my own skin. It was a revelation. It was something else.”
How painful is it that it took so long to get herself back?
“I feel very sad that so many girls are abused all over the world and that men don’t understand what it does to them. It’s not something that happens lightly, it can alter a person. And then you have to be very intentional about getting back into your own skin, but it can be done. It wasn’t so much that I felt sad about all the wasted time, because I wasn’t fully authentic, but on the other hand, why not instead just be proud of yourself that you got there and you didn’t stop trying?”
She also links plastic surgery to sexual abuse and has said that when she sees the face “of a woman who has made herself into a mask, I always think to myself… I wonder, I wonder.” She had her own breast implants taken out and has also had several facelifts of which she says she is not proud.
As for #MeToo, is it also painful to not have had such a movement 50 years ago? Fonda once again takes my negative and turns it into a positive.
“I am very grateful to be alive through this,” she says softly. “I did not think I would live to see it. Yes. And I think that it’s going to continue, it’s not just a moment. I love the Time’s Up aspect of it. We’re working with women from all different places. I’m going to DC to lobby with domestic workers. The farm workers up in Bakersfield. It’s all of us together, having each other’s backs.”
But it just comes naturally to her’: with Lily Tomlin in Grace and Frankie.
Melissa Moseley/Netflix
This is why she made the film 9 to 5 in 1980, which became one of Hollywood’s highest grossing comedies ever, despite its subject matter of the awful way men treated women in the workplace. Fonda wants to produce a new version of the film, with younger actors, who now find their work life even more precarious on zero-hours contracts. We discuss the state of the labour unions in the United States. “So all this is not so new for me. But it is for a lot of other actors, and that’s why it’s a very valuable thing to hear what other women in other industries have to put up with, women who are much more vulnerable than we are.”
I have to say it: Jane Fonda looks stunning, immaculately coiffed and made up, and with the poise and elegance that has always been hers. It’s thanks to a lifetime of fitness regimes for which everyone remembers her videos, and also to the facelifts. But they, she says, were more about survival in her industry than about vanity. “They bought me an extra 10 years.” Like it or not, it does seem to be true. How many other 80-year-old women currently have a hit comedy series on Netflix (Grace and Frankie), as well as movies coming out, a documentary on their life about to hit HBO, and no signs of stopping any time soon?
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Of course this is all down to much more than surgery: it is the third act of a career that began more than half a century ago and has involved two Oscars for Best Actress (and a further five nominations) along the way. Curiously, it is the fitness videos that people in the UK remember her for the most. In the States, there are still people who boycott Jane Fonda’s films because of how deeply involved she got in protesting against the Vietnam war. Not that any of that stopped her.
“Oh, I just feel damn lucky,” she says of her current renaissance. “I retired for 15 years. I left at 50 and came back at 65. I was married to Ted Turner and Ted didn’t really help me with confidence and things like that. [They are great friends now, however, and he recently attended her 80th birthday party.] So after that I wanted to see if I could enjoy it again. But, at 65, I never thought I’d have a career. And a hit TV show! I’m 80! I keep pinching myself! I can’t believe it! I didn’t think I would live this long!”
In Grace and Frankie, which is now approaching its fifth season, she and Lily Tomlin’s character become accidental, grumpy housemates after their husbands fall in love with each other. When I tell people I’m going to interview Jane Fonda, a surprisingly wide range of people tell me how much they love that show. “I know,” she says, her voice dropping to an absolute whisper. “We’re stunned. We did not expect that. We’re trying to figure it out!” she hisses.
Young love: with Robert Redford in 1967’s Barefoot in the Park. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
She loves working with her old friend Tomlin “because she’s a working-class gal who grew up in a fascinating family. People visit the set who were with her in elementary school. She is just so funny – and I’ve tried to learn that from her. But it just comes naturally to her.” Surely you’re funny, too, I say. “Oh no,” replies Fonda, “I don’t have a natural funny bone. I come from a long line of depressed people.” She laughs.
Having been married several times and lived with various partners, and recently split up with her last boyfriend, the music producer Richard Perry (she describes him as “a younger man” – she also wrote a blog about him having Parkinson’s), Fonda now lives in a gated retirement enclave with her own house, but a shared community centre with a pool and tennis courts “where I always see one or two other residents who seem infinitely older than I am, but they probably aren’t. I never thought I would ever live there, but it’s great.”
She does yoga and Pilates and has even made a whole new series of workout videos, “and their label is Prime Time, as they’re for older people. I can’t do the original workouts any more, because I’ll hurt myself,” she gestures to her hips, “as I have joint replacements.” In fact, she says her main form of exercise these days involves jumping into things “before I really know what I’m doing. It’s called a leap of faith and it’s my main form of exercise. It’s what keeps me young, too. That’s my new workout. When you take a leap of faith you don’t always land in the right place, but you sure do learn things. It’s good for the heart.”
Which is why she recently made a speech at the United State of Women Summit, and asked to bring Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, with her. “What I said was, when Trump was elected and white supremacy was exposed, I realised that, as a white woman, the lens through which I was looking at race was too narrow. I think a lot of Trump’s election had to do with white supremacy and anger at a black president. I was stunned at how close to the surface racism in the United States is, and I needed to understand it better, so my intention right now is to try to understand more profoundly what it means to be black in the United States. And so I started studying. And I started reading books and I read Patrisse Cullors’ book, and I read Ta-Nehisi Coates. I read The New Jim Crow [by Michelle Alexander]. So I talked about what I’ve learned, specifically about mass incarceration. I’m a white woman and this is something that we white women have to know: you can’t just be empathic, you have to be very intentional. We have to confront racism. We have to stop this. Not buy into the lies that we’re told about how the prison system stops crime. No, it creates crime.”
At the weekends, she leaves Los Angeles to go knocking on the door of Trump voters. “When you’re talking to them you can’t criticise Trump. You can’t criticise Fox News. All you can do is listen to what they care about and what they’re afraid of, and then maybe tell them something that they don’t know. Because we’re all in our bubbles, including me.” Do people recognise her? “I was in Bakersfield last Saturday and knocked on 30 doors. Only one person saw me coming and said: ‘Grace and Frankie!’ It was a kick! Nobody else knew who I was. I just say: ‘I’m Jane.’ They don’t need to know.”
She has also been acting with Robert Redford again. I tell her that I recently watched Barefoot in the Park, the 1967 film where she and Redford are giddy newlyweds in New York, and then went to Netflix and watched Our Souls at Night, in which she and Redford reunited in 2017 to play widowed grandparents who get together to end their loneliness.
‘I took a lot of heat on it from feminists’: in the 1968 erotic sci-fi film Barbarella. Ronald Grant Archive
I tell her it was a really beautiful night of cinema, to see these two actors come back together with their war wounds, their egos bruised, their hearts more honest in later life. To my surprise, Fonda’s eyes start to water. “Ohh,” she says softly. “It moves me that you say that.”
She has said that she was always in love with him when they worked together, but they were always married to other people. He said recently that he had no idea she loved him. Do they keep in touch? Send texts? “Oh no. He doesn’t text, number one; two, he’s a loner. So that’s that.” She says she won’t ever fall in love again. “I love men, I’m not done with men, but I’m done with marriage and dating.”
Fonda is unimpressed by the romance in many modern films. “I’m not a big mouth opener on camera. Every time I see a love scene with young ones – they come at each other like this…” she mimes a big wide-open slobbering jaw, “…and I’m thinking, well where does the fun come in? Because the fun is the sensuality of lips. And then slowly moving beyond that. But not trying to swallow each other.” She giggles. “I would not want to go right into a tongue kiss, quite frankly.”
And then Woody Harrelson walks past the dressing room. Fonda sends somebody to get him back. “I want to hug you!” she says, standing up to greet him. “I saw Three Billboards again last night because I had a house guest who hadn’t seen it. You’re so good Woody, God!” she says. “You’re so good, Jane!” says a glowing, goofy Harrelson. It’s like watching a peacock hug a panda.
And then they both have to go off and be on the telly, and I am left with the sense of having just been visited by grace and greatness.
Book Club is in cinemas from 1 June
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Barbarella pretty much made my adolescent boy's brain melt. I don't think I was alone... and not just among adolescents boys. I think it was more like "all males".
But of course I have since grown up. Jane Fonda no longer makes my brain melt. Well... not quite as fast...
Sweeping Generalizations [ph]
Is there something about rightwingism that just loves to keep justifying and fighting miserably failed and damaging wars?
She was gorgeous fifty years ago... and still is gorgeous today.
End of story!
I can see why old men would think that way.
I've thought that way for fifty years. I was young at first...
I know a lot of Vietnam vets, myself included, who would very much disagree with Fonda's viewpoints. I find it ludicrous and insulting at the same time that there was no mention made whatsoever about her little vacation/photo op to Hanoi during the war! Having her picture taken sitting on top of a SAM missile site with the world's biggest grin on her face. No mention of her absolute refusal to meet with American POW's, even when offered the chance, less than two blocks away from where she was staying and instead calling them war criminals and murderers and saying they could rot there forever! She has yet to ever sincerely apologize to those men for that, other than a vaguely worded publicity statement meant solely to try to raise her severely sagging ratings at the time!
I'm a Vietnam vet... and fifty years later, I really, really don't care about Fonda's anti-war activities at a time when many very good people were anti-war.
That war is over.
No Bob, it won't be over until the last of the traitors is dead, perhaps not even then. You were there and should know; guerrilla wars never end. If they did, the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973 would never have happened.
people can be anti-war without giving aid and comfort or visiting our enemies.
The dead are Jane Fonda's fault? Seriously?
Considering how quickly you go ballistic... I hope you have regular cardiac check-ups...
What about Jane's freedom of speech? Bwah ha ha ha ha
What about it?
She supports BLM that supports the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel, and she's upset about the disparity of race in American prisons? Maybe they need to do some kind of "affirmative action" as they do in universities, to provide white criminals equal space. I've enjoyed her acting, but not her politics.
Barbarella can do whatever she likes!
Gee... Class act, hmmm?
I always thought she was a beautiful but marginal actress, and a much better activist.
I think Cat Ballou was the high point of Jane Fonda's career. She was a beautiful young woman.
To me, she was always a movie star moreso than a great actress like a Meryl Streep or a Frances McDormand. And being Henry Fonda's daughter opened a lot of doors for her when she was getting started.
Her being a political activist didn't bother me. And she later apologized for the trip to North VietNam. She was naive at the time and didn't see the harm such a trip would cause.
Jane Fonda is one of those people who are a lightning rod for right wing hate , much like a Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, Jesse Jackson, etc. They need to hate someone and ridicule them on their stupid talk shows and Fonda has always been a reliable punching bag for such time wasting efforts.
I had never thought of her as being on their hate list, but now that you say it... yes! She surely is.
And she's all the more hate-able because she's gorgeous. Must drive the haters crazy.
Lee Marvin singing "I was born under a wandering star"...
Fonda's alleged apology about her vacation to Hanoi was as bogus as could be! Her ratings were sagging very low at the time and it was nothing more than a vaguely worded publicity stunt! Ask a Vietnam POW if you can find one and ask them what they thought of her so called apology? I doubt you would find any takers.
Jeez!
FIFTY YEARS AGO!
Chill, for pity's sake...
One word when it comes to chilling about Fonda. NO!
Fifty years ago, five hundred years from, 5 million years from now, hanoi jane is, was and always will be a low life scumbag POS.
Comment removed for CoC violation [ph]
What's the point? Do you want to re-fight all the pro-war/anti-war manifestations from fifty years ago? Why? That war is long gone. The world has moved on. You need to move on, too.
As one Vietnam vet to another, I sincerely thank you for your service. It is obvious we are not going to agree here, so out of respect to you that it is your seed I will just let it go and move on. Sometimes my PTSD gets the better of me and my mouth gets away from me. My apologies for any slight or offense to any on my part. A good day to you Sir.
Cool.....I'm glad that she still pisses off the right wingers. I also think she did a very good thing by protesting the war crimes the US was committing in Vietnam.
Please! Let that old war go!
We have more than enough still active today.
Somehow your comment does not surprise me in the least. I committed no war crimes and am very proud of my service, But I guess you may not understand that....
Strange coming from someone that is supporting the person hell bent on recreating this country into an autocracy, or are you still pretending?
My older Brother served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and I can assure you he would would not be among those who would be that forgiving. Fonda was fully aware of what she was doing and the effect it would have on the morale of our men and women who were serving in Vietnam, and the people here in the US. But, she willingly, and happily, did it anyway.
There is no excuse for what she did, thus, there is no excuse for her now. She not only owes the men and women who served in Vietnam, and those here at home, but, all those who paid the ultimate price for their service in Vietnam. Even then, it would be very hard to simply turn a blind eye to what she did.
Grow up Skrekk - there are a lot of Dems/Libs who can't stand her either.
Jeeeezzzz - why are your politics always getting in the way of your discussion?
Those who served in Vietnam, and those who gave their lives there, were/are from all walks of life, and the bullets didn't ask what religion or political party the person it was aiming at was for. Bullets are non-discriminatory when they kill.
No one asked the person standing next to them in the line of fire what religion they were or what their political affiliation was. All they cared about was the fact that death was staring them in the face and they could be the next one to take a bullet.
So no, it is not only the Republicans who can't stand her, there are equally as many Democrats who feel that way too. It wasn't only Republicans she betrayed.
I agree Ed, I do not give her a pass for what she said no matter how long ago it was any more than I give trump a pass for bashing McCain and Kahn..
All well deserved dislike at that.
Naive? Hanoi Jane was 35 years old when she went on her Vietnam vacation in 1972. Before that ...
Also read:
Skirting the CoC [ph]
Instead of attacking my character , perhaps you should try to debunk the facts I posted to John Russell about Jane Fonda (the topic) in comment 3.4 .
Jésu!!
I do not care! It was fifty fucking years ago!
Have you really been ruminating about this for fifty fuxcking years? Removed for CoC violation [ph]
Please try to make unemotional, unbiased replies to my fact-based comments.
As a disabled veteran from that period I still despise her actions
I'm sad for you.
Seriously? You hold Jane Fonda responsible for injuries you sustained in war?
Good Lord!
I made no such statement or inference. As someone who gave everything for my country, I despise her act of giving aid and comfort to our enemy during time of war
You didn;t give everything....you're still alive
How DARE you live through that--which must mean it negates your service to some.
THANK YOU for your service.
Are any of us on NewsTalkers in a position to judge how debilitating livefreeordie's or anyone's wartime injuries are? I know that I'm not.
Kind of amazing and sad, isn't it?
And you are talking to me why again?
Yes, because the comment I block quoted in 3.4.11 was originally posted by a US veteran.
Then that really, really is a sad turn for that veteran.
Hanoi Jane gave aid and comfort to out enemies. That is pretty much all I ever needed to know about her personally. While I have enjoyed some of her acting, that is a separate issue from her personal life.
IMO, that's an odd question, because I've not known of any reason why you and I should not talk to each other, Trout Giggles.
Re: my comment 3.4.11 -- I had an uncle who was gravely disabled in his very early 20s during his Army service and was paralyzed from his neck down to his feet until his death. All he could do was move his head side to side/up and down, speak for short periods of time but it was hard to understand what he said. Oh, I forgot to mention that due to his war injuries, he was also totally deaf and partially blind.
So yes, many people have given their all to defend our country but they "lived" while imprisoned in a hospital bed and were kept alive with medicine and oxygen. My uncle was one of them.
When you put your life on the line, you are giving everything. The fact that I survived with disabilities doesn’t diminish that fact
No Value "BF"
Notice that his personal attack comment still stands even though it was reported many times.
You do understand the phrase "All gave some, some gave all"
I'm sorry about your uncle, if he truly is that disabled. But the phrase above means that while all who served gave some, the some who gave all are the ones who died.
Now....back to this talking thing, I've asked you to stop talking to me. We don;t get along and every time we do speak, it ends up in a slap fight. Now kindly do as I ask and IGNORE ME!!!!
What a disgusting comment.
Your comment speaks volumes about you and even more about those who liked it.
And then you top it off with this....
SMH
Read the entire thread and maybe you won't act so self-righteous
I've been on NT for less than a year, but it didn't take me long to learn to avoid belligerent and hostile comments because they're made by people itching for a fight instead of a mature, polite discussion.
As far as Jane Fonda is concerned, she can rot.
I agree. And there are some here that have been on NT less than a year who are among the major contributors of those kinds of comments, and that is all they are here for...to create a verbal Fight Club.
then start avoiding me since I'm hostile and belligerant.
I think you go looking for fights, too cause you are not the nice person you pretend to be
And it's been over 100 years since the Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. We can also add Stalin, Assad, and so many others.
Some people think that 50 years is nothing and want to sweep what happened under a rug.
'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.'
What makes you think I didn't?
You don't have to be self-righteous to recognize a disgusting comment by someone.
There are different ways to draw attention to yourself if that is what you crave.
I actually don't know why I responded to you.
Then don't
If you people don't even want to try and understand what I said, then please don't bother responding to me and I shall do the same.
I really don't have the time or the patience to explain things to people who are close minded
Being that I was a 10 years old and had no idea what she did in regards to the Vietnam war until many many years later, I still love these movies she was in: Barefoot in the Park, Fun with Dick and Jane, Nine to Five, Coming Home, California Suite and On Golden Pond.
Good movies in there, but acting is separate from her personal morals and actions.
This is NewsTalkers! The seed is about the last couple decades in the life of a fascinating and beautiful person.
And what do visitors talk about? Themselves... and ambiguous events fifty years ago...
Is bitterness the prime mover for NewsTalkers?
I enjoy her acting but despise her political actions and beliefs
I've enjoyed many of Jane Fonda's movies. What many people don't seem to understand is that she's spent approximately 60 of her 80 years advocating anti-military and anti-American causes.
To you it may be "50 years" old, but, to many who served in Vietnam, it is like yesterday. To try and shame the Veterans of that war for still being angry at Fonda for her actions in Vietnam is really a bridge too far.
She may have made some good movies, and is still a lovely woman, but, she is still the same Jane Fonda that shamed herself in Vietnam, and that part of her life is still as credible as anything else she has done in her life.
The person who deserves condemnation is Jane Fonda, not the Veterans who remember her deeds in Vietnam. And no matter how many yeas ago it was, it still counts.
Just my own opinion.
"ambiguous events fifty years ago.."
Bob - Vietnam was not an "AMBIGUOUS" event 50 years ago. The loss of 58,000 + young men/women was not an "EVENT".
I, personally, got to spend 27 months in that country with its "ambiguous" events - many months that I would love to have washed out of my memories of the friends and companions who never came/will never come back from those "ambiguous" events.
Sorry Bob, but I believe you owe all of us an apology.
I think she is still beautiful
*** sigh ***
yer too cute, Bob
Peter was more talented and made way cooler movies. The Trip is fantastic.
Hi Dean...
If "Fonda" makes "Peter" on-topic... you should be able to do even better with "Jane"...
She made some good movies too. Much better than the crap Hollywood is turning out these days.
.. and there's Henry, too...
Is it too late to prosecute her?
For what?
Well, regardless of her actions in Viet Nam I adore her show with Lilly Tomlin. It's well done and funny.
Would that be the "Nine to Five" movie with Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda?
No, it's Grace and Frankie on Netflix.
Article is locked as Bob cannot defend himself while on vacation.