At 87, Academy Award-winning actor Jane Fonda is pouring her energy into activism. Earlier this year, she made headlines after delivering a fiery critique of the Trump administration while accepting a SAG-AFTRA award for lifetime achievement.
"This is not the time to go inward," Fonda says of the current political climate. "We have to go out, we have to speak, we have to shout, we have to find nonviolent ways to avoid what's happening — which we're very, very close to becoming fascist in this country."
Fonda is no stranger to politics — or controversy. In the 1970s she received death threats after speaking out against the Vietnam War.
"We had smoke bombs thrown through our windows. We had our home ransacked," Fonda recalls. "At its worst, we had to have somebody remotely turn our car on, in case it was a car bomb."
In the 1980s, Fonda filmed a workout video as a way to fund her political action committee, the Campaign for Economic Democracy. The video became an unexpected bestseller.
Fonda attributes some of her activist spirit to her father, actor Henry Fonda, whose credits include 12 Angry Men and Young Mr. Lincoln.
"He laid the groundwork," Fonda says. "Although I didn't become an activist until I was in my 30s, I view his films as fertilizer in the soil of my soul. It was there. I just needed to stir it up a little so the sprouts could grow."
Interview highlights
On becoming an activist in her 30s
I had spent 30-some years not being involved in anything, not paying attention, not knowing what was going on. But at the age of 31, I lived in Paris. I was married to a Frenchman, a French director, and there were American soldiers who had been in Vietnam that left and came to Paris because they had turned against the war. And they were looking for American compatriots to help them find doctors, dentists, money, whatever they needed, and they found me.
I asked them about the war and I could not believe what they said about what was happening — what we were doing to civilians, how Vietnamese felt about American soldiers being there, etc. ... and I didn't believe them. I really believed at that time that wherever our soldiers were, we were on the side of the angels. And they gave me a book to read, Jonathan Shell's The Village of Ben Suc. And when I finished the book ... I was a different person. And that's when I became an activist.
On traveling to North Vietnam in 1972 and the infamous photo of her sitting on an anti-aircraft gun
Before I went, they asked me to list the things that I wanted to do and see, and I particularly said no interest in going to a military site. But at the end, I had been there for two weeks. My big mistake was going alone because by the time the trip was over, I was like a wet noodle. I had seen and experienced things that changed my life. I mean, imagine, you come from the most powerful nation in the world that has the mightiest military machine. You're in a country of peasants and fisher people, fishermen mostly, with no heavy equipment. They have to rebuild by hand, and they were winning. That was hard to wrap my head around. What does it mean that this third world country can defeat a country like ours? I had to rethink everything. ...
They wanted to take me to the central square where Ho Chi Minh, decades before, had announced Vietnamese independence. And there was an anti-aircraft gun. It was not active or anything like that. And a group of Vietnamese soldiers sang me a song in Vietnamese about the Declaration of Independence. And then they asked me to sing, and I didn't know what to do. I sang "Old MacDonald" or something stupid, I don't know. But I was laughing and everything, and they offered me to sit down on the gun, and I did.
It was a terrible mistake, because it made me look like I was against Americans. I wasn't there to be against Americans, I was there to try to understand the war better and to stop the bombing of the dykes.
On her speech at the SAG awards
I was thinking about all the people that live in the middle of the country, what's called "flyover country." People who used to belong to unions, that worked jobs, that paid enough to buy a house and send your children to high school and college — and that's gone for them. When the rug has been pulled out from under you like that ... it's very hard and you're going to be very angry. My dad came from Nebraska, from Omaha, and I've walked precincts in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio, and you know, people are really angry and they're really hurting.
On her difficult relationship with her father, Henry Fonda
He objectified me and he objectified women. One of the things that I've really learned is our parents aren't perfect. Our parents have all the weaknesses that all humans have. He wasn't perfect, but he was a good man. He had good values and he did his best. So I don't feel anger or anything; that's the way men of that generation thought about women. …
I just wish he was still alive. I would talk to him in a totally different way than I would have before. But, of course, it's too late.
On her mother's death by suicide, when Jane was 12
When I was writing my memoir, My Life So Far, in the early 2000s. I got a lawyer to get her records from the institution where she was when she killed herself, and among the papers that I got was she must have been asked to write a little biography of herself. And I read that, and it turns out that she was sexually abused at age 7. I could tell reading this document ... what it was that had happened to her. I think she had mental issues. Her father was alcoholic and schizophrenic and paranoid and a problem. But then to have on top of that being sexually abused had really affected her.
On struggling with body dysmorphia
I suffered from an eating disorder known as bulimia. We didn't even have a name for it at the time. It was really hard because I didn't know to go to a program or to talk to anybody. I just quit. … I can't pretend that I'm 100% over that. I just don't act on it. I don't try to starve myself. I don't try to do extreme things to try to be thinner than I am. I eat healthy now and I can't imagine ever, ever having an eating disorder again. It just feels good.
On thinking about her own death
I think about my death a lot, and I think it's very healthy. I think thinking about death gives meaning to life. At 60, I thought a lot about, "OK, this is my last act." This is it. First 30 years, second 30 years. My last 30 years ... What do I wanna get out of it? I wanna end it with no regrets, or at least as few regrets as possible.
Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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