(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Jane Fonda is, without a shadow of a doubt, a Hollywood icon. Born into acting royalty as the daughter of Henry Fonda, there was no way that she would grow up to live a remotely normal life. Instead, she became one of the most controversial figures of the 1960s and ‘70s due to her active involvement in anti-war protests and feminist activism, resulting in an image of the star sitting on an anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War causing significant outrage.
Fonda was defiant in her activism – she didn’t merely talk about the change she wished to see, she went out there and tried to make them happen. This translated into her acting roles as well, with parts in movies like Alan J Pakula’s Klute and Jean-Luc Godard’s Tout va bien reflecting her politics. It was Klute that won Fonda her an Oscar, too, with her complex performance as a call girl earning lots of praise.
The actor has always pushed boundaries, like when she became the first American actor to appear nude in a foreign film with Circle of Love or when she played the titular character in the controversial erotic sci-fi film Barbarella. As the decades rolled on, she found herself starring in many acclaimed movies, like Julia, On Golden Pond, and 9 to 5, yet there came a point when she lost her passion for acting, leaving a 15-year-gap in her filmography, with these years predominantly filled with various exercise videos instead.
Talking to Deadline, Fonda revealed, “Oh, it totally disappeared for me as something I cared for or was passionate about. I took a 15-year break. I was 49 and I was really unhappy. I remember I was making a film with [Robert ]De Niro called Stanley and Iris in Canada. I sat on the edge of my hotel room bed and I was trying to envision a future for myself, and I couldn’t. I thought, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ I can’t act if I’m miserable and so I thought, ‘Well, I’m just going to stop.’”
Knowing that acting is not something you can merely put yourself through if you don’t have the passion or dedication for it, Fonda took a step back to reassess what she wanted to do with her life. “I bought some property in New Mexico and I was going to become a full-time environmental activist. And then Ted Turner came into my life. People think I gave up acting because of him. The fact is that I was on the way out. I had 10 years with him that were fabulous and then I had five years writing my memoir, which was very cathartic. It’s hard to know who you want to be if you don’t know who you’ve been.”
However, a job offer brought Fonda back to the industry, and she has since appeared in more movies and television shows, like Youth and Grace & Frankie. “At the end of that process I got offered Monster-in-Law. I was now 62. Even though it was a popcorn movie it was transformative for me in terms of my career. It was the only strategic career thing I ever did.”
“I thought, ‘Hmm, people will come to see J.Lo and they will either rediscover me, or, if they’re young, they’ll discover Fonda,’ which is absolutely what happened.”
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