Fonda lays bare details of life so far
By Lisa Anderson Tribune national correspondent
Most people don't marry famous French film directors who like to engage in menages a trois. Most don't find out about their mother's suicide in a movie magazine and most don't go through life without ever speaking frankly to their father.
And, if they did, they probably wouldn't write about it. But, Jane Fonda--actress, author, anti-war activist and best-selling exercise video guru--never has been like most people. And, a willowy and youthful grandmother at 67, she still isn't.
Back in the public eye after a 15-year virtual absence, Fonda this week embarked on a two-month publicity tour to promote her decidedly decorum-be-damned autobiography "My Life So Far," published Tuesday, and her starring role in the comedy film "Monster-in-Law," due to open May 13.
This double-barreled re-emergence coincides with the beginning of what Fonda calls the "third act" of what has been, according to her, an unusually privileged, often painful and frequently tumultuous life.
"It's a hell of a lot easier when you've got money," she said wryly during an interview Tuesday night, her arms tightly crossed over the jacket of her caramel suede pantsuit. "I'm not a crybaby and I don't ask for pity. This is not a self-pitying book."
It is, rather, a sometimes uncomfortable, unflinching book in tone and detail, a final attempt to exorcise demons, she said, in order to move on in her life.
The demons were many, real and imagined. The daughter of the late actor Henry Fonda, an aloof and intimidating father, she said she grew up insecure, bulimic and desperate to please men. She described how these traits were exacerbated during failed marriages to three famous, if faithless, husbands: the late French film director Roger Vadim, who directed her in 1968's "Barbarella"; anti-war activist Tom Hayden and CNN founder Ted Turner, whose lovemaking she described as "like Versailles with all the spectacular lit-up fountains."
She remains friendly with Hayden and Turner. She said they reviewed the book's manuscript for accuracy at her request.
During the last 15 years of what she describes as "retirement," Fonda has worked extensively with young people. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 and, in 2002, the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University's School of Medicine.
As for her decision to return to acting, she said, "Money was part of it. Half of my salary went to endowing positions at the Jane Fonda Center at Emory. . . . The other reason was I wanted to see after 15 years if I still enjoyed it." She did.
Fonda's return to a more public life also coincides this month with the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a pivotal event in her life. It was a conflict Fonda famously opposed, earning her the contemptuous sobriquet "Hanoi Jane." The war also provided the backdrop of 1978's "Coming Home," the film that won her the second of her two Oscars; the first was for "Klute" in 1971.
As proud as Fonda remains of her opposition to the war and even of the anti-war broadcasts she did for Radio Hanoi, she also is apologetic for an incident that occurred during her infamous trip to North Vietnam in 1972. "That two-minute lapse of sanity will haunt me until I die," she wrote.
Fonda said that on the last day of her two-week visit to Hanoi she was taken, against her wishes, to a military installation. Still laughing and clapping over sharing a song with young North Vietnamese soldiers, she said, she unthinkingly sat down in the gunner's seat of an anti-aircraft gun. Cameras flashed. And, two minutes later she knew she was in trouble.
"I realize that it's not just a U.S. citizen laughing and clapping on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun: I am Henry Fonda's privileged daughter who appears to be thumbing my nose at the country that has provided these privileges," she wrote.
She realized that the photo--widely circulated when she was investigated by the FBI for treason--negated the prior two years in which she had worked extensively with Vietnam veterans, she said.
"Now, by mistake, I appear in a photograph to be their enemy. I carry this heavy in my heart. I always will," she wrote.
Fonda's opposition to the war also contributed to the longstanding rift with her father.
Although he never spoke to her about her activism, she said, she knew it wounded his strong sense of patriotism.
However, she said, "I was able to go to him before he died and say I'm sorry I hurt him." I think she is coming up with this due to hindsight and is creating this whole farce to make herself politcially correct and acceptable to people again, I just saw a short quip of her on an interview and she really doesn't look as sorry as she seems to think she is.
otherwise she would have given her lifes works to help those she has wronged, I have never seen any thing remotely close to this...
Her activism was one of the many things Jane Fonda never discussed with her father. "I never even told him I knew that my mother killed herself," she said. She is such a peach
On her 42nd birthday, Frances Ford Seymour Fonda fatally slashed her throat with a razor in a mental hospital. Jane, 12, and her younger brother, Peter, were told their mother had a heart attack. Jane learned differently from a classmate's movie magazine. She said her father never discussed her mother's death.
One of Fonda's own regrets, she said, was not being a better parent to her own children when they were younger. Vanessa, 36, her daughter with Vadim, is a documentary filmmaker and mother of two children. She lives in Atlanta, where Fonda has made her home for the last 13 years. Her 31-year-old son with Hayden, Troy Garity, is an actor.
Fonda said she is determined not to create any more regrets. "The main thing [would be] if I get to the end of my life feeling I hadn't done all I could to be close to my children." She will spend the rest of her life justifying her wrongs in her own mind, but will never honestly fess up to what she did and the true suffering she caused.
By Lisa Anderson Tribune national correspondent
Most people don't marry famous French film directors who like to engage in menages a trois. Most don't find out about their mother's suicide in a movie magazine and most don't go through life without ever speaking frankly to their father.
And, if they did, they probably wouldn't write about it. But, Jane Fonda--actress, author, anti-war activist and best-selling exercise video guru--never has been like most people. And, a willowy and youthful grandmother at 67, she still isn't.
Back in the public eye after a 15-year virtual absence, Fonda this week embarked on a two-month publicity tour to promote her decidedly decorum-be-damned autobiography "My Life So Far," published Tuesday, and her starring role in the comedy film "Monster-in-Law," due to open May 13.
This double-barreled re-emergence coincides with the beginning of what Fonda calls the "third act" of what has been, according to her, an unusually privileged, often painful and frequently tumultuous life.
"It's a hell of a lot easier when you've got money," she said wryly during an interview Tuesday night, her arms tightly crossed over the jacket of her caramel suede pantsuit. "I'm not a crybaby and I don't ask for pity. This is not a self-pitying book."
It is, rather, a sometimes uncomfortable, unflinching book in tone and detail, a final attempt to exorcise demons, she said, in order to move on in her life.
The demons were many, real and imagined. The daughter of the late actor Henry Fonda, an aloof and intimidating father, she said she grew up insecure, bulimic and desperate to please men. She described how these traits were exacerbated during failed marriages to three famous, if faithless, husbands: the late French film director Roger Vadim, who directed her in 1968's "Barbarella"; anti-war activist Tom Hayden and CNN founder Ted Turner, whose lovemaking she described as "like Versailles with all the spectacular lit-up fountains."
She remains friendly with Hayden and Turner. She said they reviewed the book's manuscript for accuracy at her request.
During the last 15 years of what she describes as "retirement," Fonda has worked extensively with young people. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995 and, in 2002, the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University's School of Medicine.
As for her decision to return to acting, she said, "Money was part of it. Half of my salary went to endowing positions at the Jane Fonda Center at Emory. . . . The other reason was I wanted to see after 15 years if I still enjoyed it." She did.
Fonda's return to a more public life also coincides this month with the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a pivotal event in her life. It was a conflict Fonda famously opposed, earning her the contemptuous sobriquet "Hanoi Jane." The war also provided the backdrop of 1978's "Coming Home," the film that won her the second of her two Oscars; the first was for "Klute" in 1971.
As proud as Fonda remains of her opposition to the war and even of the anti-war broadcasts she did for Radio Hanoi, she also is apologetic for an incident that occurred during her infamous trip to North Vietnam in 1972. "That two-minute lapse of sanity will haunt me until I die," she wrote.
Fonda said that on the last day of her two-week visit to Hanoi she was taken, against her wishes, to a military installation. Still laughing and clapping over sharing a song with young North Vietnamese soldiers, she said, she unthinkingly sat down in the gunner's seat of an anti-aircraft gun. Cameras flashed. And, two minutes later she knew she was in trouble.
"I realize that it's not just a U.S. citizen laughing and clapping on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun: I am Henry Fonda's privileged daughter who appears to be thumbing my nose at the country that has provided these privileges," she wrote.
She realized that the photo--widely circulated when she was investigated by the FBI for treason--negated the prior two years in which she had worked extensively with Vietnam veterans, she said.
"Now, by mistake, I appear in a photograph to be their enemy. I carry this heavy in my heart. I always will," she wrote.
Fonda's opposition to the war also contributed to the longstanding rift with her father.
Although he never spoke to her about her activism, she said, she knew it wounded his strong sense of patriotism.
However, she said, "I was able to go to him before he died and say I'm sorry I hurt him." I think she is coming up with this due to hindsight and is creating this whole farce to make herself politcially correct and acceptable to people again, I just saw a short quip of her on an interview and she really doesn't look as sorry as she seems to think she is.
otherwise she would have given her lifes works to help those she has wronged, I have never seen any thing remotely close to this...Her activism was one of the many things Jane Fonda never discussed with her father. "I never even told him I knew that my mother killed herself," she said.
She is such a peach On her 42nd birthday, Frances Ford Seymour Fonda fatally slashed her throat with a razor in a mental hospital. Jane, 12, and her younger brother, Peter, were told their mother had a heart attack. Jane learned differently from a classmate's movie magazine. She said her father never discussed her mother's death.
One of Fonda's own regrets, she said, was not being a better parent to her own children when they were younger. Vanessa, 36, her daughter with Vadim, is a documentary filmmaker and mother of two children. She lives in Atlanta, where Fonda has made her home for the last 13 years. Her 31-year-old son with Hayden, Troy Garity, is an actor.
Fonda said she is determined not to create any more regrets. "The main thing [would be] if I get to the end of my life feeling I hadn't done all I could to be close to my children." She will spend the rest of her life justifying her wrongs in her own mind, but will never honestly fess up to what she did and the true suffering she caused.
