Jane Fonda

Birth Data

Biography

American actress who at times has been a sexpot, a feminist, a political activist, a maker of exercise videos, businesswoman, philanthropist and wife to famous men. As she reinvents herself in a series of different incarnations, all in this lifetime, she has been the object of admiration and outrage. An extremist who has frequently demonstrated poor judgment, Fonda is also known for her courage and mettle, standing up for that which she believes to be right. She stands among the world's most admired women.

Jane is the daughter of Henry Fonda and his second wife, Frances Brokaw. Her famous dad was hot-tempered, inattentive and largely uncommunicative. Her mom, an East Coast socialite, became an agoraphobic penny-pincher who was hospitalized for mental illness and killed herself when Jane was 13. As a junior at boarding school, Jane started a pattern of bulimia that lasted 23 years during the height of her movie-making career. She made her acting debut at 18 in "Country Girl," starring with her dad, thus beginning her spectacular career.

Fonda was married to French filmmaker Roger Vadim from 1965-1971; they had one daughter, Vanessa. He directed her as she played the title role in the film "Barbarella," a chain-smoking, pill-popping bulimic sex-pot. After 1969, she changed her image to one of a serious, first-rate actress. Fonda won the New York Film Critics Award for "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and an Oscar for "Klute," 1972. She has had seven Academy Award nominations, including that of Best Actress in "Julia," 1978. In 1979 she won a second Oscar for "Coming Home."

During the Vietnam War, she became a political activist and gained the reputation of being a simple-minded loudmouth whom some called traitor. She was nicknamed Hanoi Jane after she broadcast over Hanoi radio and posed on an anti-aircraft carrier with the North Vietnamese with whom the American military was locked in battle. Further enraging Americans, she publicly denounced U.S. soldiers as killers, declared that Black Panther Huey Newton was "close to sainthood" and visited American POWs in what was reportedly used as North Vietnamese propaganda. On January 21, 1973, during her political period, she married another anti-war activist Tom Hayden and became immersed in his 1976 Senatorial attempt, before they later divorced in 1990. (Their son Troy Hayden, known professionally as Troy Garity, was arrested January 15, 1990 for spray-painting graffiti near a freeway and his half-sister, Vanessa, was ordered to do community service after being arrested for mouthing-off at the scene of a drug bust the previous November.)

In the next decade, keeping physically fit and active, she turned herself into an aerobics guru with exercise videos, becoming the head of a $670 million aerobics and fitness empire. She denounced cosmetic surgery at the same time that she herself had eye lifts and breast implants.

On December 21, 1991 at 11:22 AM, she married media tycoon Ted Turner at his 8,000 acre ranch near Capps, east of Tallahassee, FL. They seemed an ideal couple, each having to compromise with the other's strong beliefs and ego. Jane presented herself as an attractive modern woman and Ted demonstrated a tolerance for liberal causes and passion for the environment. In her customary pattern of being a chameleon to her mate, she gave up her acting career to become the ideal corporate wife. Fonda and Turner ultimately showed the stress of being an unlikely duo; on January 4, 2000 they announced their separation. One reason given: her latest "cause," that of becoming a Christian, rubbed Ted the wrong way. Their divorce was final on May 22, 2001.

At age 67, she is working on the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, an organization which she founded. Her memoir, "My Life So Far," was released on April 5, 2005 and the following month, the movie "Monster-in-Law," co-starring Jane, was released. In her book, on tour and on the interview circuit, Fonda has tried to explain herself and her actions leaving some of her audience to admire her and others to revile her. One Vietnam veteran spit in her face at a book signing; Fonda said she would not press charges.

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