Jane fonda biography imdb top 250
Jane Fonda
American actress and activist (born )
Jane Seymour Fonda[2] (born December 21, ) is an American actress and activist. Recognized as a film icon,[3]Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.
She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Clip Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards.
Fonda also received the Honorary Palme d'Or in , the AFI Life Achievement Award in , the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in , the Cecil B. DeMille Award in , and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in
Born to socialite Frances Ford Seymour and star Henry Fonda, she made her screen debut in the passionate comedy Tall Story ().
She rose to prominence acting in the comedies Cat Ballou (), Barefoot in the Park (), Barbarella (), Fun with Dick and Jane (), California Suite (), The Electric Horseman (), and 9 to 5 ().
Fonda established herself as a dramatic actress, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her roles as a prostitute in the thriller Klute () and the woman in cherish with a Vietnam War veteran in the drama Coming Home (). She was Oscar-nominated for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (), Julia (), The China Syndrome (), On Golden Pond (), and The Morning After ().
After a 15 year hiatus, she returned to acting in Monster-in-Law (), Youth (), and Our Souls at Night ().
On stage, Fonda made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Short-lived Girl (), for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
In , she returned to Broadway for the play 33 Variations (), earning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Participate nomination. For her work on television, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the television clip The Dollmaker ().
She also was Emmy-nominated for her roles in The Newsroom (–) and Grace and Frankie (–).
Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a call on to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname "Hanoi Jane".
During this time, she was effectively blacklisted in Hollywood. Fonda protested the Iraq War along with violence against women, and she describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist.[4] Fonda has co-founded the Hollywood Women's Political Committee in and the Women's Media Center in Fonda is also known for her exercise tapes, starting with Jane Fonda's Workout (), which became the highest-selling videotape of its time.[5]
Early life and education
Jane Seymour Fonda was born via caesarean section on December 21, , at Doctors Hospital in Novel York City.[6][7] Her parents were Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Seymour and American actor Henry Fonda.
According to her father, the surname Fonda came from an Italian ancestor who immigrated to the Netherlands in the s.[8] There, he intermarried; the resultant family began to use Dutch given names, with Jane's first Fonda ancestor reaching New York in [9][10][11] Fonda also has English, French, and Scottish ancestry.
She was named for the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, to whom she is distantly related on her mother's side, and because of whom, until she was in fourth grade, Fonda said she was called "Lady" (as in Lady Jane).[13] Her brother, Peter Fonda, was also an player, and her maternal half-sister is Frances de Villers Brokaw (also known as "Pan"), whose daughter is Pilar Corrias, the owner of the Pilar Corrias Gallery in London.[14]
In , when Fonda was 12, her mother died by suicide while undergoing treatment at Craig House psychiatric hospital in Beacon, New York.[15] Later that year, Henry Fonda married socialite Susan Blanchard, 23 years his junior; this marriage ended in divorce.
Aged 15, Jane taught dance at Fire Island Pines, New York.[17] Fonda attended Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, Connecticut; the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York; and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.[18] Before her acting career, she was a model and appeared twice on the cover of Vogue.[19]
Fonda became interested in the arts in , while appearing with her father in a charity performance of The Territory Girl at the Omaha Society Playhouse.[19] After dropping out of Vassar, she went to Paris for six months to analyze art.
Upon returning to the US, in , she met Lee Strasberg; the meeting changed the course of her being. Fonda said, "I went to the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father – who had to say so – told me I was wonderful.
At anything. It was a turning point in my experience. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had approach off my life!"[21]
Career
– Early roles and breakthrough
Fonda's stage work in the late s laid the foundation for her film career in the s.
She averaged almost two movies a year throughout the decade, starting in with Tall Story, in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball celestial body, played by Anthony Perkins.
Period of Adjustment and Walk on the Wild Side followed in In Walk on the Untamed Side, Fonda played a prostitute and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. In , she starred in Sunday in New York. Newsday called her "the loveliest and most gifted of all our novel young actresses".[22] However, she also had detractors – in the same year, the Harvard Lampoon named her the "Year's Worst Actress" for The Chapman Report.[23] Her next two pictures, Joy House and Circle of Love (both ), were made in France; with the latter, Fonda became one of the first American film stars to emerge nude in a foreign movie.[24] She was offered the coveted role of Lara in Doctor Zhivago, but turned it down because she didn't want to go on location for nine months.
Fonda's career breakthrough came with Cat Ballou (), in which she played a schoolmarm-turned-outlaw.
This comedy Western received five Oscar nominations, with Lee Marvin winning best actor, and was one of the year's top ten films at the box office. It was considered by many to have been the motion picture that brought Fonda to bankable stardom.
The following year, she had a starring role in The Chase opposite Robert Redford, in their first film together, with two-time Oscar winner Marlon Brando.
Click through it and sound off in our comments about your favorites. Director: Robert Luketic. Writer: Anya Kochoff. After a year absence from the big screen Fonda returned to acting in this romantic comedy vehicle starring Jennifer Lopez.The film received some positive reviews, but Fonda's performance was noticed by Variety magazine: "Jane Fonda, as Redford's wife and the mistress of wealthy oilman James Fox, makes the most of the biggest female role."[26] She returned to France to construct The Game Is Over (), often described as her sexiest film, and appeared in the August issue of Playboy, in paparazzi shots taken on the set.[27] Fonda immediately sued the magazine for publishing them without her consent.
After this came the comedies Any Wednesday (), opposite Jason Robards and Dean Jones, and Barefoot in the Park (), again co-starring Redford.
In , she played the title role in the science fiction spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol.
In contrast, the tragedy They Shoot Horses, Don't They? () won her critical acclaim and marked a significant turning point in her career; Variety wrote, "Fonda, as the unremittingly cynical loser, the tough and bruised babe of the Dust Bowl, gives a dramatic production that gives the film a personal focus and an emotionally gripping power."[30] In addition, well-known film critic Pauline Kael, in her New Yorker review of the film, noted of Fonda: "[She] has been a charming, witty nudie cutie in recent years and now gets a chance at an archetypal ethics.
Fonda goes all the way with it, as screen actresses rarely do once they develop stars. She doesn't try to save some ladylike part of herself, the way even a good actress like Audrey Hepburn does, peeping at us from behind 'vulgar' roles to confirm us she's not really love that.
Fonda stands a pleasant chance of personifying American tensions and dominating our movies in the seventies as Bette Davis did in the thirties."[31] For her performance, she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and earned her first Academy Awards nomination for Best Actress.
Fonda was very selective by the end of the decade, turning down lead roles in Rosemary's Baby and Bonnie and Clyde.[32]
– Widespread success and acclaim
In the seventies, Fonda enjoyed her most critically acclaimed period as an actress despite some setbacks for her ongoing activism.
According to writer and critic Hilton Als, her performances starting with They Shoot Horses, Don't They? heralded a new kind of acting: for the first time, she was willing to alienate viewers, rather than try to prevail them over. Fonda's ability to continue to develop her talent is what sets her apart from many other performers of her generation.[31]
Fonda won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in , playing a high-priced call girl, the gamine Bree Daniels, in Alan J.
Pakula's neo-noir psychological thriller Klute. Prior to shooting, Fonda spent moment interviewing several prostitutes and madams. Years later, Fonda discovered that "there was like a marriage, a melding of souls between this character and me, this woman that I didn't reflect I could play because I didn't think I was name girl material.
It didn't matter."[33] Upon its release, Klute was both a critical and commercial success, and Fonda's performance earned her widespread recognition. Pauline Kael wrote:
As an actress, [Fonda] has a special kind of smartness that takes the build of speed; she's always a little ahead of everybody, and this quicker beat – this quicker responsiveness – makes her more exciting to watch.
This quality works to great benefit in her full-scale, definitive portrait of a call girl in Klute. It's a good, massive role for her, and she disappears into Bree, the contact girl, so totally that her performance is very pure – unadorned by "acting".
She never stands outside Bree, she gives herself over to the role, and yet she isn't missing in it—she's fully in governance, and her means are extraordinarily economical. She has somehow got to a plane of acting at which even the closest closeup never reveals a misleading thought and, seen on the movie streets a block away, she's Bree, not Jane Fonda, walking toward us.
There isn't another young dramatic actress in American films who can feel her.[34]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times also praised Fonda's act, even suggesting that the movie should have been titled Bree after her character: "What is it about Jane Fonda that makes her such a fascinating actress to watch?
She has a sort of nervous intensity that keeps her so firmly locked into a film personality that the character actually seems distracted by things that arrive up in the movie."[35] During the – awards season, Fonda dominated the Best Actress category at almost every major awards ceremony; in addition to her Oscar win, she received her first Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, her first National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress and her second New York Motion picture Critics Circle Award for Top Actress.
Her younger brother, Peter Fonda, also became an star and had a successful career in the film industry. Fonda's early life was marked by tragedy when her mother, Francis Ford Brokaw, took her possess life when Jane was just 10 years old. This event had a lasting impact on her life. Her father, Henry Fonda, became withdrawn and barely spoke to his children.Between Klute in and Fun with Dick and Jane in , Fonda did not have a major film success. She appeared in A Doll's House (), Steelyard Blues and The Cobalt Bird (). In the first, some critics felt Fonda was miscast, but her work as Nora Helmer drew praise, and a review in The Modern York Times opined, "Though the Losey film is ferociously flawed, I recommend it for Jane Fonda's performance.
Beforehand, it seemed fair to wonder if she could personify someone from the past; her voice, inflections, and ways of moving have always seemed totally contemporary. But once again she proves herself to be one of our finest actresses, and she's at residence in the s, a creature of that period as much as of ours."[36] From comments ascribed to her in interviews, some have inferred that she personally blamed the situation on anger at her outspoken political views: "I can't say I was blacklisted, but I was greylisted."[37] However, in her autobiography, My Life So Far, she rejected such simplification.
"The advice is that because of my actions against the war my career had been destroyed But the truth is that my career, far from being destroyed after the war, flourished with a vigor it had not previously enjoyed." She reduced acting because of her political movement providing a new focus in her life.
Her return to acting in a series of 'issue-driven' films reflected this modern focus.
Jane Fonda did an extraordinary job with her part. She is a splendid actress with a strong analytical consciousness which sometimes gets in her way, and with an amazing technique and control of emotion; she can cry at will, on cue, mere drops or buckets, as the scene demands I thought Jane well deserved the Oscar she should hold got.[39]
—Fred Zinnemann
director of Julia ()
In , Fonda starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien, directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin.
The two directors then made Letter to Jane, in which the two spent nearly an hour discussing a news photograph of Fonda. At the period, while in Rome, she connected a feminist march on Parade 8 and gave a concise speech of support for the Italian women's rights.[40]
Through her film company, IPC Films, she produced films that helped return her to star status.
Jane Seymour Fonda [ 2 ] born December 21, is an American actress and activist. Recognized as a film icon, [ 3 ] Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television. Fonda established herself as a dramatic actress, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her roles as a prostitute in the thriller Klute and the woman in love with a Vietnam War veteran in the drama Coming Home Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War.The comedy film Fun with Dick and Jane is generally considered her "comeback" picture. Critical reaction was mixed, but Fonda's comic performance was praised; Vincent Canby of The Brand-new York Times remarked, "I never have trouble remembering that Suffer from Fonda is a fine dramatic actress but I'm surprised all over again every time I see her do comedy with the mixture of comic intelligence and abandon she shows here."[41] Also in , she portrayed the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia, receiving positive reviews from critics.
Gary Arnold of The Washington Post described her recital as "edgy, persuasive and intriguingly tensed-up," commenting further, "Irritable, intent and agonizingly self-conscious, Fonda suggests the internal conflicts gnawing at a talented woman who craves the self-assurance, resolve and wisdom she sees in figures enjoy Julia and Hammett."[42] For her performance, Fonda won her first BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, her second Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and received her third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.[43]
During this period, Fonda announced that she would make only films that focused on important issues, and she generally stuck to her word.
She turned down An Unmarried Woman because she felt the part was not relevant. In , Fonda was at a career peak after she won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Sally Hyde, a conflicted adulteress in Coming Home, the story of a disabled Vietnam War veteran's difficulty in re-entering civilian life.[43] Upon its release, the film emerged as a major commercial triumph with audiences and received positive reviews from critics; Ebert noted that her Sally Hyde was "the kind of character you somehow wouldn't expect the outspoken, intelligent Fonda to play," and Jonathan Rosenbaum of the San Diego Reader felt that Fonda was "a marvel to watch; what fascinates and involves me in her performance are the conscientious effort and thought that seem to go into every line reading and gesture, as if the question of what a captain's wife and former cheerleader was like became a source of endless curiosity and discovery for her."[44] Her recital also earned her a third Golden Globe Award for Foremost Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama as well, making this her second consecutive beat.
Also in , she reunited with Alan J. Pakula to star in his post-modern Western drama Comes a Horseman as a hard-bitten rancher, and later took on a supporting role in California Suite, where she played a Manhattan workaholic and divorcee.
Variety noted that she "demonstrates yet another aspect of her amazing range"[45] and Time Out New York remarked that she gave "another performance of unnerving sureness".[46]
She won her second BAFTA Award for Best Actress in with The China Syndrome, about a cover-up of a vulnerability in a nuclear might plant.
Cast alongside Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas, in one of his early roles, Fonda played a clever, ambitious television news reporter. Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, singled out Fonda's performance for praise: "The three stars are splendid, but maybe Miss Fonda is just a bit more than that.
Her performance is not that of an actress in a star's role, but that of an actress creating a character that happens to be major within the production. She keeps getting better and better."[47] This role also earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress.
The same year, she starred in the western adventure-romance film The Electric Horseman with her frequent co-star, Robert Redford. Although the film received mixed reviews, The Electric Horseman was a box office success, becoming the eleventh highest-grossing film of [48] after grossing a domestic total of nearly $62&#;million.[49] By the tardy s, Motion Picture Herald ranked Fonda as Hollywood's most bankable actress.[50]
– Established star and hiatus
In , Fonda starred in 9 to 5 with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton.
The motion picture was a huge critical and box office success, becoming the second highest-grossing release of the year.[51] Fonda had long wanted to work with her father, hoping it would help their strained relationship.[43] She achieved this goal when she purchased the screen rights to the participate On Golden Pond, specifically for her father and her.[52] The father-daughter rift depicted on screen closely paralleled the real-life association between the two Fondas; they eventually became the first father-daughter duo to earn Oscar nominations (Jane earned her first Foremost Supporting Actress Oscar nomination) for their roles in the matching film.
On Golden Pond, which also starred four-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn, brought Henry Fonda his only Academy Award for Best Actor, which Jane acknowledged on his behalf, as he was ill and could not leave home. He died five months later.[43] Both films grossed over $ million domestically.[53][54]
Fonda continued to appear in feature films throughout the s, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Direct Actress for her portrayal of a Kentucky mountain woman in The Dollmaker (), and starring in the role of Dr.
Martha Livingston in Agnes of God (). The following year, she played an alcoholic actress and murder suspect in the thriller The Morning After, antonym Jeff Bridges. In preparation for her role, Fonda modeled the character on the starlet Gail Russell, who, at 36, was found dead in her apartment, among empty liquor bottles.
Writing for The New Yorker, Pauline Kael commended Fonda for giving "a raucous-voiced, down-in-the-dirty performance that has some of the accuse of her Bree in Klute, back in ".[55] For her performance, she was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress.
She ended the decade by appearing in Old Gringo.
For many years Fonda took ballet class to hold fit, but after fracturing her foot while filming The China Syndrome, she was no longer able to participate. To compensate, she began participating in aerobics and strengthening exercises under the direction of Leni Cazden.
The Leni Workout became the Jane Fonda Workout, which began a second career for her, continuing for many years.[43] This was considered one of the influences that started the fitness craze among baby boomers, then approaching middle age.
In , Fonda released her first exercise video, titled Jane Fonda's Workout, inspired by her best-selling book, Jane Fonda's Workout Book. Jane Fonda's Workout became the highest selling home video of the next few years, selling over a million copies.
The video's emit led many people to purchase the then-new VCR in request to watch and perform the workout at home.[56] The practice videos were directed by Sidney Galanty, who produced the first video and 11 more after that. She would subsequently unleash 23 workout videos with the series selling a total of 17&#;million copies combined, more than any other exercise series.[43] She released five workout books and thirteen audio programs, through After a fifteen-year hiatus, she released two new fitness videos on DVD in , aiming at an older audience.[3]
On May 3, , she entered into a non-exclusive agreement with movie show distributor Columbia Pictures, whereas she would star in and/or manufacture projects under her own banner Jayne Development Corporation, and she would develop offices at The Burbank Studios, and the organization immediately started after her previous office she co-founded with Bruce Gilbert, IPC Films shuttered down.[57] On June 25, , she renamed her production company, Fonda Films, because the original specify felt that it would sound like a real estate company.[58] In , she starred in the romantic drama Stanley & Iris () with Robert De Niro, which was her last film for 15 years.
The film did not fare skillfully at the box office. Despite receiving mixed to negative reviews, Fonda's performance as the widowed Iris was praised by Vincent Canby, who stated, "Fonda's increasingly rich resources as an actress are evident in abundance here.
They even overcome one's knowledge that just beneath Iris's frumpy clothes, there is a strong, perfectly molded body that has become a multi-million-dollar industry."[59] In , after three decades in film, Fonda announced her retirement from the film industry.[60]
– Come back to acting and Broadway
In , she returned to the screen with the box office achievement Monster-in-Law, starring opposite Jennifer Lopez.[43] Two years later, Fonda starred in the Garry Marshall-directed drama Georgia Rule alongside Felicity Huffman and Lindsay Lohan.
Georgia Rule was panned by critics, but A. O. Scott of The New York Times felt the film belonged to Fonda and co-star Lohan, before writing, "Ms. Fonda's straight back and piercing eyes, the righteous jaw line she inherited from her father and a reputation for humorlessness all serve her well here, but it is her warmth and comic timing that produce Georgia more than a provincial scold."[61] In , Fonda returned to Broadway for the first time since , playing Katherine Brandt in Moisés Kaufman's 33 Variations.[62][63] In a mixed review, Ben Brantley of The Modern York Times praised Fonda's "layered crispness" and her "aura of beleaguered briskness that flirts poignantly with the ghost of her spiky, confrontational screen presence as a young woman.
For those who grew up enthralled with Ms. Fonda's screen image, it's hard not to respond to her performance here, on some level, as a personal memento mori."[64] The role earned her a Tony nomination for Foremost Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play.[65]
Fonda played a leading role in the drama All Together, which was her first film in French since Tout Va Bien in [66][67][68] The same year she starred alongside Catherine Keener in Peace, Love and Misunderstanding, playing a hippie grandmother.[69] In , Fonda began a recurring role as Leona Lansing, CEO of a major media company, in HBO's original political drama The Newsroom.
Her role continued throughout the show's three seasons, and Fonda received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.
In , Fonda had a small role in the Lee Daniels directed racial drama The Butler inspired by the life and career of White House butler Eugene Allen.
Fonda portrayed First Lady Nancy Reagan opposite Alan Rickman as United States President Ronald Reagan.[70] Fonda stated that despite her political differences with Nancy she had no difficulty playing the role saying, "I am an actor, and I have no intention of allowing the political differences between us to shade my portrayal of her.
I will not be disrespectful."[71] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote in his review, "the best cameocomes from Jane Fonda, who is very good indeed as a gracious Nancy Reagan."[72] Katey Rich of The Guardian agreed writing, "Fonda eerily transforms herself into Nancy Reagan".[73] She had more film work the following year, appearing in the comedies Better Living Through Chemistry and This is Where I Leave You.
She voiced Maxine Lombard in the season 26 episode "Opposites A-Frack". a traits on The Simpsons.[74] She played an acting diva in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth in , for which she earned a Golden Globe Award nomination.
(Top) 1 Early life and education. 2 Career. Toggle Career subsection. Jane Seymour Fonda [2] (born December 21, ) is an American actress and activist.
She also appeared in Fathers and Daughters () with Russell Crowe.
–present: Grace and Frankie and other roles
Fonda appeared as the co-lead in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. She and Lily Tomlin played aging women whose husbands reveal they are in love with one another.
Filming on the first season was completed in November ,[75] and the show premiered online on May 8, The series concluded in after running for 7 seasons.[76]
In , Fonda voiced Shuriki in Elena and the Covert of Avalor.
In June , the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Fonda and others told the stories of the people killed there.[77][78]
Fonda starred in her fourth collaboration with Robert Redford in the romantic drama film Our Souls at Night.
The clip and Fonda's performance received critical acclaim upon release. In , she starred opposite Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen in the romantic comedy clip Book Club. Although opened to mixed reviews, the film was a major box office accomplishment grossing $&#;million against a $10&#;million budget, despite releasing the alike day as Deadpool 2.
Fonda is the subject of an HBO original documentary entitled Jane Fonda in Five Acts, directed by the documentarian Susan Lacy. Receiving rave reviews, it covers Fonda's life from childhood through her acting career and political activism and then to the present day.[79] It premiered on HBO on September 24, [80]
Fonda filmed the seventh and last season of Grace and Frankie in , finishing production in November.
The first four episodes premiered August 14, ,[81] with the final 12 released on Netflix on April 29, In November , it was announced Fonda would be in the second installment of Amazon Prime Video's Yearly Departed.
Jane Fonda - Wikipedia: Jane Fonda. Actress: Klute. Born in New York City to legendary screen actor Henry Fonda and Ontario-born Recent York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight.She appeared alongside the host Yvonne Orji, and fellow eulogy givers Chelsea Peretti, Megan Stalter, Dulcé Sloan, Aparna Nancherla, and X Mayo. It premiered on December 23, [82]
Fonda joined the cast of the film 80 for Brady, which pairs her with veteran actresses Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field.
It also stars former NFL Quarterback, Tom Brady. She and Tomlin headline Paul Weitz's dark comedy Moving On, co-starring Malcolm McDowell and Richard Roundtree. Her third project for is Book Club: The Next Chapter, which she made in Italy.
Political activism
During the s, Fonda engaged in political activism in help of the Civil Rights Movement, and in opposition to the Vietnam War.[43] Fonda's visits to France brought her into contact with leftist French intellectuals who were opposed to war, an experience that she later characterized as "small-c communism".
Along with other celebrities, she supported the Alcatraz Island occupation by Indigenous Americans in , which was intended to call attention to the failures of the government with regard to treaty rights and the movement for greater Indigenous sovereignty.[84]
She supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers in the early s, stating: "Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels.
It runs in our blood." She called the Black Panthers "our revolutionary vanguard we must support them with love, funds, propaganda and risk."[85] She has been involved in the feminist movement since the s and dovetails her activism in back of civil rights.
Fonda and Barbra Streisand joined with ten other women in the business industry of Greater Los Angeles to establish the Hollywood Women's Political Committee (HWPC) in The committee's initial goal was to assist in the presidential campaign of Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro.
The Mondale–Ferraro ticket failed against incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but HWPC retrenched itself with a list of New Left political goals, and helped to turn the Senate Democratic in [86] In , HWPC helped to elect a record-breaking number of women legislators, an achievement called the Year of the Woman.
Described by observers as carrying forward the same political goals as Fonda and Streisand, HWPC continued its activism through political setbacks of and ,[87] finally dissolving in [88] During their run, the HWPC was called "the unpartnered most-powerful entertainment group" in politics.[89]
Opposition to the Vietnam War
See also: Opposition to the Vietnam War and RITA Resistance Inside the Armies §&#;Jane Fonda and RITA
On May 4, , Fonda appeared before an assembly at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, to speak on G.I.
rights and issues. The terminate of her presentation was met with a discomfiting silence until Beat poet Gregory Corso staggered onto the stage, drunk. He challenged Fonda, using a four-letter expletive: why hadn't she addressed the shooting of four students at Kent State by the Ohio National Guard, which had just taken place?
In her autobiography, Fonda revisited the incident: "I was shocked by the news and felt like a fool." On the same time, she joined a protest rally on the home of university president Ferrel Heady. The protesters called themselves "They Shoot Students, Don't They?" – a reference to Fonda's recently released motion picture, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, which had just been screened in Albuquerque.
In the same year, Fonda spoke out against the war at a rally organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
She offered to assist raise funds for VVAW and was rewarded with the title of Honorary National Coordinator.[90] That fall, Fonda started a tour of college campuses on which she raised funds for the organization.
As noted by The New York Times, Fonda was a "major patron" of the VVAW.[91]
In , Fonda, with Fred Gardner and Donald Sutherland formed the FTA tour ("Free The Army", a play on the troop expression "Fuck The Army"), an anti-war road show engineered as an answer to Bob Hope's USO tour.
The tour, described as "political vaudeville" by Fonda, visited military towns along the West Coast, aiming to establish a dialogue with soldiers about their upcoming deployments to Vietnam. The dialogue was made into a movie (F.T.A.) which contained strong, frank criticism of the war by servicemembers; it was released in [92]
Visit to Hanoi
Between and , almost Americans – mostly civil rights activists, teachers, and pastors – traveled to North Vietnam to watch firsthand the war situation with the Vietnamese, believing that the news media in the Combined States predominantly provided a U.S.
viewpoint. American travelers to North Vietnam were routinely harassed upon their return home. Fonda also visited Vietnam, traveling to Hanoi in July to witness the bombing damage to the dikes. After touring and photographing dike systems in North Vietnam, she said the United States had been intentionally targeting the dike system along the Red River.
Sweden's ambassador to Vietnam, however, observed the bomb damage to the dikes and described it as "methodic". Other journalists reported that the attacks were "aimed at the whole system of dikes". Columnist Joseph Kraft, who was also touring North Vietnam, said he believed the ruin to the dikes was incidental and was being used as propaganda by Hanoi, and that, if the U.S.
Air Press were "truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way".[94] Due to the publicity surrounding Fonda's visit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assessed aerial photography of the North Vietnamese dike system, leading to two conclusions: First, that the North Vietnamese dike system was incredibly robust, meaning it would be costly to attack and easy to repair.
They record that "A crew of less than 50 men with wheelbarrows and hand tools probably could repair in one day the largest crater observed."[95] Second, they found that "all the damaged sections of dikes are seal to valid military-related targets",[95] and not in areas that would cause the most damage to the dike system.
Thus the CIA argued that "A investigation of available photography shows conclusively that there has been no concerted and intentional bombing of North Vietnam's vital dike system."
Fonda was photographed seated on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun; the photo outraged a number of Americans,[96] and earned her the nickname "Hanoi Jane".[97][98] In her autobiography, she wrote that she was manipulated into sitting on the battery; she had been horrified at the implications of the pictures.
In a entry on her official website, Fonda explained:
It happened on my last day in Hanoi. I was exhausted and an emotional wreck after the 2-week visit&#; The translator told me that the soldiers wanted to sing me a song. He translated as they sung.
It was a song about the day 'Uncle Ho' declared their country's independence in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square. I heard these words: 'All men are created equal; they are given certain rights; among these are existence, Liberty and Happiness.' These are the words Ho pronounced at the historic ceremony.
I began to cry and clap.
Release Calendar Top Movies Most Trendy Movies Browse Movies (segment "Jane Fonda: My Life So Far: Part II") / Self - Actress (segment "Jane Fonda: My Life.'These young men should not be our enemy. They celebrate the same words Americans do.' The soldiers asked me to sing for them in return&#; I memorized a anthem called 'Dậy mà đi' ["Get up and go"], written by anti-war South Vietnamese students. I knew I was slaughtering it, but everyone seemed delighted that I was making the try.
I finished. Everyone was laughing and clapping, including me&#; Here is my best, honest recollection of what happened: someone (I don't remember who) led me towards the gun, and I sat down, still laughing, still applauding. It all had nothing to do with where I was sitting.
I hardly even thought about where I was sitting. The cameras flashed&#; It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned. I will never know. But if they did I can't blame them. The buck stops here.
If I was used, I allowed it to happen&#; a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever&#; But the photo exists, delivering its message regardless of what I was doing or feeling. I carry this heavy in my heart.
I have apologized numerous times for any pain I may have caused servicemen and their families because of this photograph. It was never my intention to cause harm.[99]
Fonda made radio broadcasts on Hanoi Radio throughout her two-week tour, describing her visits to villages, hospitals, schools, and factories that had been bombed, and denouncing U.S.
military policy.[] During the course of her visit, Fonda visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When stories of torture of returning POWs were later creature publicized by the Nixon administration, Fonda said that those making such claims were "hypocrites and liars and pawns", adding about the prisoners she visited, "These were not men who had been tortured.
These were not men who had been starved.
Jane Seymour Fonda is an acclaimed American actress and activist. She has had a prolific career spanning over six decades and has established herself as a cinematic icon. Fonda made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story and went on to rise to prominence through acclaimed performances in films such as the comedies Cat BallouBarefoot in the ParkBarbarellaFun with Dick and Jane She has also received nominations for a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards.These were not men who had been brainwashed."[] In addition, Fonda told The New York Times in , "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture&#; but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie."[] Her visits to the POW camp led to persistent rumors that prisoners had been coerced into meeting with Fonda by the North Vietnamese with torture, which were repeated widely, and continued to circulate on the Internet decades later.
Fonda, as well as the named POWs, have denied the rumors,[99] and subsequent interviews with the POWs showed these allegations to be false—the persons named had never met Fonda.[]
In , Fonda helped fund and arrange the Indochina Peace Campaign, which[] continued to mobilize antiwar activists in the US after the Paris Peace Agreement, until when the United States withdrew from Vietnam.[] Because of her tour of North Vietnam during wartime and the subsequent rumors, resentment against her persists among some veterans and serving U.S.
military. For example, when a U.S. Naval Academy plebe ritually shouted out "Goodnight, Jane Fonda!", the entire company of midshipmen plebes replied "Goodnight, bitch!"[][] This train has since been prohibited by the academy's Plebe Summer Typical Operating Procedures.[] In , Michael A.
Smith, a U.S. Navy veteran, was arrested for disorderly conduct in Kansas City, Missouri, after he spat chewing tobacco in Fonda's face during a book-signing event for her autobiography, My Life So Far. He told reporters that he "consider[ed] it a debt of honor", adding "she spit in our faces for 37 years.
It was absolutely worth it. There are a lot of veterans who would love to perform what I did." Fonda refused to press charges.[][]
Regrets
In a interview with Barbara Walters, Fonda expressed regret for some of her comments and actions, stating:
I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did.
I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families. I will go to my solemn regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft gun, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes.
It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.[]
In a 60 Minutes interview on Rally 31, , Fonda reiterated that she had no regrets about her trip to North Vietnam in , with the exception of the anti-aircraft-gun photo.
She stated that the incident was a "betrayal" of American forces and of the "country that gave me privilege". Fonda said, "The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda's daughter sitting on an enemy aircraft gun was a betrayal the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine." She later distinguished between regret over the use of her image as propaganda and pride for her anti-war activism: "There are hundreds of American delegations that had met with the POWs.
Both sides were using the POWs for propaganda It's not something that I will apologize for." Fonda said she had no regrets about the broadcasts she made on Radio Hanoi, something she asked the North Vietnamese to do: "Our government was lying to us and men were dying because of it, and I felt I had to do anything that I could to expose the lies and help end the war."[]
Subject of government surveillance
In , it was revealed that Fonda was one of approximately 1, Americans whose communications between and were monitored by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as part of Project MINARET, a program that some NSA officials have described as "disreputable if not downright illegal".[][] Fonda's communications, as well as those of her husband, Tom Hayden, were intercepted by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Under the UKUSA Agreement, intercepted data on Americans were sent to the U.S. government.[][]
arrest
On November 2, , Fonda was arrested by authorities at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on suspicion of drug trafficking.[] Her luggage was searched when she re-entered the United States after participating in an anti-war college speaking tour in Canada, and several small baggies containing pills were seized.[] Although Fonda protested that the pills were harmless vitamins, she was booked by police and then released on bond.
Fonda alleged that the arresting officer told her he was acting on manage orders from the Nixon Ivory House.[] As she wrote in , "I told them what [the vitamins] were but they said they were getting orders from the White House.
I think they hoped this 'scandal' would cause the college speeches to be canceled and corrupt my respectability."[] After lab tests confirmed the pills were vitamins, the charges were dropped with little media attention.
Fonda's mugshot from the arrest, in which she raises her fist in a sign of solidarity, has since become a widely published image of the actress.[] It was used as the poster image for the HBO documentary on Fonda, "Jane Fonda in Five Acts", with a colossal billboard sporting the image erected in Times Square in September [] In , she began selling merchandise with her mugshot image to benefit the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential.[]
Feminist causes
In a interview with Brie Larson, published by People magazine, Fonda stated, "One of the great things the women's movement has done is to make us realise that (rape and abuse is) not our fault.
We were violated and it's not right." She said, "I've been raped, I've been sexually abused as a infant and I've been fired because I wouldn't sleep with my boss." She said, "I always thought it was my fault; that I didn't do or say the right thing.
I know young girls who've been raped and didn't even comprehend it was rape. They reflect, 'It must have been because I said 'no' the erroneous way.'"
Through her work, Fonda said she wants to support abuse victims "realize that [rape and abuse] is not our fault".
Fonda said that her difficult past led her to become such a passionate activist for women's rights. The actress is an active supporter of the V-Day movement, which works to stop violence against women and girls. In , she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health, which aims to help prevent teen pregnancy.
She said she was "brought up with the disease to please" in her preliminary life.[] Fonda revealed in that her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, was recurrently sexually abused as young as eight, and this may have led to her suicide when Jane was []
Fonda has been a longtime supporter of feminist causes, including V-Day, of which she is an honorary chairperson, a movement to stop violence against women, inspired by the off-Broadway hit The Vagina Monologues.
She was at the first summit in , bringing together founder Eve Ensler, Afghan women oppressed by the Taliban, and a Kenyan activist campaigning to save girls from genital mutilation.[]
In , she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University in Atlanta to support prevent adolescent pregnancy through education and program development.[] On February 16, , Fonda led a march through Ciudad Juárez, with Sally Field, Eve Ensler and other women, urging Mexico to provide sufficient resources to newly appointed officials in helping probe the murders of hundreds of women in the rough border city.[] In , she also served as a mentor to the first all-transgender cast of The Vagina Monologues.[] In the days before the September 17, , Swedish elections, Fonda went to Sweden to support the new political party Feministiskt initiativ in their election campaign.[]
In My Life So Far, Fonda stated that she considers patriarchy to be harmful to men as well as women.
She also states that for many years, she feared to call herself a feminist, because she believed that all feminists were "anti-male". But now, with her increased understanding of patriarchy, she feels that feminism is beneficial to both men and women, and states that she "still loves men", adding that when she divorced Ted Turner, she felt like she had also divorced the world of patriarchy, and was very happy to own done so.
In April , Fonda said that while she was 'glad' that Bernie Sanders was running, she predicted Hillary Clinton would become the first female president, whose supposed win Fonda believed would result in a "violent backlash." Clinton did not become president and got crushed by Republican Party's nominee businessman Donald Trump in the general election later that year.
Fonda went on to say that we need to "help men understand why they are so threatened – and change the way we view masculinity".[] In March , Fonda endorsed Sanders for the Democratic nomination in the election, calling him the "climate candidate."[]
Women's Media Center
In , along with Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, she cofounded the Women's Media Center, an corporation that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content.[] Fonda serves on the board of the organization.[][] Based in Los Angeles, she has lived all over the world, including six years in France and 20 in Atlanta.
LGBTQ+ support
Fonda has publicly shown her support of the LGBTQ+ community many times throughout her career. In August , Fonda, the cast of Grace and Frankie, and other advocates joined to support a fundraiser hosted by the Los Angeles LGBT Center to help members of the LGBTQ+ community during the COVID pandemic.[]
Fonda spoke out as an LGBTQ+ ally drawn-out before it was common.[] She appeared in a video of a interview during the Pale Night Riots in San Francisco after the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly same-sex attracted politician in California.
During the interview she was asked if the gay community was still being discriminated against, to which she replied that they "are culturally, psychologically, economically, politically" entity discriminated against.[] Fonda was then asked if the gay people has used her as an advocate and she replied that she hopes they will operate her, though she stressed that "they are a very potent movement, they don't need me, but they like me (and) they know by working together we can be stronger than either entity is by itself."[]
Native Americans
Fonda went to Seattle in to support a group of Native Americans who were led by Bernie Whitebear.
The team had occupied part of the grounds of Fort Lawton, which was in the process of being surplussed by the Together States Army and turned into a park. The group was attempting to secure a ground base where they could settle services for the sizable local urban Indian population, protesting that "Indians had a right to part of the land that was originally all theirs."[] The endeavor succeeded and the Daybreak Star Cultural Center was manufactured in the city's Discovery Park.[]
In addition to environmental reasons, Fonda has been a critic of oil pipelines because of their being built without consent on Native American tribal land.
In , Fonda responded to American President Donald Trump's mandate to resume construction of the controversial North Dakota Pipelines by saying that Trump "does this illegally because he has not gotten consent from the tribes through whose countries this goes" and pointing out that "the U.S.
has agreed to treaties that require them to get the consent of the people who are affected, the indigenous people who live there."[]
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
In December , Fonda visited Israel and the West Bank as part of a tour focusing on stopping violence against women.
She demonstrated with Women in Shadowy against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip outside the residence of Israel's Prime Minister. She later visited Jewish and Arab doctors, and patients at a Jerusalem hospital, followed by visits to Ramallah to see a physical rehabilitation center and Palestinian refugee camp.[]
In September , she was one of more than 1, signatories to a letter protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's spotlight on Tel Aviv.[] The object letter said that the spotlight on Tel Aviv was part of "the Israeli propaganda machine" because it was supported in part by funding from the Israeli government and had been described by the Israeli Consul General Amir Gissin as creature part of a Brand Israel campaign intended to draw attention away from Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.[][][] Other signers included actor Danny Glover, musician David Byrne, journalist John Pilger, and authors Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, and Howard Zinn.[][]
Fonda, in The Huffington Post, said she regretted some of the language used in the original protest letter and how it "was perhaps too easily misunderstood.
It certainly has been wildly distorted. Contradictory to the lies that include been circulated, the protest letter was not demonizing Israeli films and filmmakers." She continued, writing "the greatest 're-branding' of Israel would be to celebrate that country's long standing, courageous and robust peace movement by helping to end the blockade of Gaza through negotiations with all parties to the conflict, and by stopping the expansion of West Bank settlements.
That's the way to show Israel's vow to peace, not a PR campaign. There will be no two-state solution unless this happens."[] Fonda emphasized that she, "in no way, support[s] the destruction of Israel. I am for the two-state solution.
I possess been to Israel many times and love the country and its people."[] Several prominent Atlanta Jews subsequently signed a letter to The Huffington Post rejecting the vilification of Fonda, who they described as "a powerful supporter and friend of Israel".[]
Opposition to the Iraq War
See also: Opposition to the Iraq War
Fonda argued that the Iraq War would turn people all over the world against America, and asserted that a global hatred of America would result in more terrorist attacks in the aftermath of the war.
In July , Fonda announced plans to make an anti-war bus tour in March with her daughter and several families of military veterans, saying that some war veterans she had met while on her book tour had urged her to communicate out against the Iraq War.[] She later canceled the tour due to concerns that she would divert attention from Cindy Sheehan's activism.[]
In September , Fonda was scheduled to join British politician and anti-war activist George Galloway at two stops on his U.S.
book tour—Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin. She canceled her appearances at the last minute, citing instructions from her doctors to avoid travel following recent hip surgery.[] On January 27, , Fonda participated in an anti-war rally and march held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., declaring that "silence is no longer an option".[] She spoke at an anti-war rally earlier that day at the Navy Memorial, where members of the organization Free Republic picketed in a counter protest.[]
Fonda and Kerry
In the presidential election, her name was used as a disparaging epithet against John Kerry, a former VVAW commander, who was then the Democratic Party presidential candidate.
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie called Kerry a "Jane Fonda Democrat". Kerry's opponents also circulated a photograph showing Fonda and Kerry in the same large crowd at a anti-war rally, though they sat several rows apart. A faked composite photograph, which gave a false impression that the two had shared a speaker's platform, was also circulated.[]