Jane Fonda is headed for Melbourne and having the time of her life at 80
ON the eve of her Australian speaking tour, Jane Fonda opens up about happiness and hip replacements, and why getting older doesn’t mean slowing down.
VIC News
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IT’S a plot device as old as time: ageing women cast as players in a doomed quest for eternal youth. From the wicked witches in fairytales, gripped by consuming envy of younger women, to resentful stepmothers yearning for a silken dalliance with their younger years.
But as ageing women become one of the world’s fastest-growing demographics, this important section of society is smashing down embittered old hag stereotypes and harnessing its power for a revolution. And at the helm is Jane Fonda.
Far from living out her days in a retirement village, the screen icon, cultural touchstone and political rebel is proof that 80 is the new 60, and no longer means circling the drain of life.
This living legend, who has been breaking down barriers for more than six decades on every stage imaginable, remains as candid, mischievous and in-demand as ever.
She has her own hit Netflix series, Grace and Frankie, for which she received an Emmy Award nomination, her new flick Book Club is about to hit cinemas, she is a beauty ambassador for L’Oréal, and is on the frontline of Hollywood’s Time’s Up movement.
Now, the two-time Academy Award winner and outspoken activist, who joined the league of Hollywood octogenarians in December, is about to arrive in Australia on a speaking tour.
With a wealth of treasurable anecdotes, Fonda will treat Melbourne and Sydney audiences to an intimate insight into her stellar career, growing up in Hollywood royalty, personal hardships, activism and her current projects, on and off the screen.
The evening is also set to be a celebration of Fonda’s defiant endurance.
“I’m 80 years old, and I can honestly say that this is the best part of my life. This is not what I expected at all, and I’m not finished,” she says from the US with her trademark, wry coolness.
FONDA STILL ROCKS THE RED CARPET
“I never thought I would get to 80, and if I could have imagined what I would be, should I ever do the unlikely thing of living that long, I saw myself as a grouchy old woman; never that it would be a happy time for me.
“But I’m much less grouchy than I was when I was 20, because earlier in my life, the good old days were not very good. It’s hard to be young and I’m going to talk about why that’s true and why it’s way easier to be older.”
But Fonda cautions, “I don’t want to romanticise getting older because obviously there are things that can happen, you know Alzheimer’s and dementia and cancer, but on an emotional, intellectual, spiritual level, getting older can be quite different to what you imagine, and I did not expect this at all.”
Fonda is calling this time in her life her “third act”, and hopes her speaking tour will lessen people’s fear of getting older: by helping younger people feel differently about ageing, while teaching those who have celebrated a certain number of successive birthdays how to finish up the task of finishing themselves.
In many ways, the woman who taught a generation how to do pulsing arm aerobics has become the how-to-age manual.
“I mean a lot of it is luck, but luck is opportunity meeting preparation,” she says. “I’ve worked hard to get to this point in my life and I think I have lessons … I can impart to people.”
With the poise of a university lecturer, she says, “Historically the metaphor for ageing was an arch. You are born, you ascend to midlife at the top of the arch, and then you decline into decrepitude.
“But as I did research for the book I wrote about ageing called Prime Time, I discovered another metaphor, which is a staircase.
“Sure our bodies may be compromised; mine certainly is — I’ve got osteoarthritis, and I have a hip that has been replaced, a knee that has been replaced — but that doesn’t define me.
“We can continue to ascend a staircase on a spiritual, emotional level — you can keep getting better and growing and even gaining wisdom as you mount the staircase and that’s what I want to focus on.”
If Fonda does hold the crystal ball of what 80-year-olds can look forward to, she sure as hell makes it sound exciting.
“We have to stop worrying so much about losing our youth and start focusing on what are the great things we gain by getting older,” she says. “Do you know, today, we are granted, and it’s a tremendous gift, an entire second adult lifetime beyond what our parents and grandparents had? What are we supposed to do with it?
“Be sorry that we’re not young any more? We’ve got to understand that this is a precious gift. We may not be able to make our lives longer, but we can make them deeper and wider.”
FONDA is a natural storyteller — and she has one hell of a story.
Born in New York City in 1937 to Hollywood actor Henry Fonda and Frances Seymour Fonda, she was just 12 when she lost her mother to suicide, something she wouldn’t discover until reading it in a magazine.
In the 1960s, her star ascended thanks to a number of big-name films, including the comedy Cat Ballou and Barbarella, before book-ending the ’70s with two best actress Oscars, in 1972 for Klute and in 1979 for Coming Home.
In 1980, she starred in the iconic film 9 to 5, and in 1981, alongside her late father in On Golden Pond, a film described as an on-screen therapy session that mirrored the pair’s strained relationship.
The following year, Fonda used her star power to revolutionise the fitness industry — her one-woman Workout video remains the top-grossing home video of all time. She also famously left showbiz behind for more than 15 years, before making a first-of-its-kind comeback at 65.
Of course Fonda has made headlines off the big screen too; she was married three times, suffered eating disorders and disembodiment, and was one of the first Hollywood A-listers to wear cosmetic intervention as a badge of honour.
It’s interesting then that Fonda’s real pride today comes from ageing, not fighting it — even admitting it wasn’t until she turned 60 that she began to love herself.
“I’m very grateful that it happened to me later in life, when I could actually be conscious of it happening — of my stepping back into my skin and owning who I am,” she says. “I was physically, mentally and psychologically aware and I could feel it happening.
“Maybe some people are born and their whole lives they are who they are meant to be, and how great that is. But there’s something really great about having it happen when you are older and when you are aware of it.
“And you’ve known what it was like before, so you feel all the more appreciation for it now because it wasn’t always that way.”
So is there room for love in this third act? Or is Fonda, who has been married to director Roger Vadim, politician Tom Hayden and billionaire CNN founder Ted Turner, now committed to arguably the most gratifying relationship of her life — with herself?
“I’ve been married three times, I’ve had important relationships before and after and in between, and I’m very grateful to the men in my life,” Fonda says. “I have learned a lot and had a wonderful time with all of them, but I don’t intend to do that again.
“I feel complete and I went through so much of my life feeling like if I wasn’t with a male, not just a male, but an alpha male — you know, a charismatic, brilliant, interesting guy that could take me into worlds that I’d never been before, whether it was French culture and cinema or political history or Ted Turner with his sailing and his properties and travelling the world — I thought, ‘Oh my God, if I’m not with somebody like that, then I don’t exist’.
“I’ve gotten over that, I don’t feel that way any more. I’m living alone and thoroughly enjoying it.
“I’m friends with my exes; well, there’s only one ex who is still alive, but when my first two husbands died, I was with them and we remained close. Life is too short.”
Life is short, and while history has been too slow for some women, Fonda, herself a victim of sexual abuses, is incredibly grateful to be around to see the tidal wave of the Time’s Up and #MeToo movements against sexual harassment and assault sweep the globe.
“I never thought I’d live long enough to see this happen. And I’m very aware of the fact that the reason this issue has exploded the way it did was because the women who spoke out were white and famous,” she says, with an acute sense of the tide women have found themselves swimming against.
“And it was Hollywood. And soon after that, Mónica Ramírez, president of the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance, wrote a letter on behalf of the 700,000 farmworker women that said, ‘Dear sisters in Hollywood, reaching out in support of you, we stand beside you’.
“And that was a very important thing for many of us in Hollywood, and it gave real meaning to the notion of inter-sectionality, and we realised that we have a responsibility, not only to clean up our own industry, but because we are famous, we can use our voices to help lift the voices of the women who are far more vulnerable than we are: domestic workers, office workers, restaurant workers, who are so much more isolated and are barely hanging on financially and risk so much more if they speak out.
“We have to stand side-by-side with our sisters in those other sectors of the economy and all of us rise together. That’s a very important thing that is represented in the Time’s Up movement.”
So does the millennial audience need a modern day retelling and reunion of 9 to 5, given the current climate?
“We are working on it, we are working on it,” Fonda says, enlivened.
Storming the metaphorical barricades is, of course, not a new phenomenon for the original actor/activist. And while she has expressed regret for the infamous “Hanoi Jane” picture taken of her during the Vietnam War, the powerhouse philanthropist, outspoken Donald Trump opponent, and climate change campaigner is grateful she was galvanised into a life of action.
“I came to it late,” she says. “I didn’t really become an activist until I was in my late 30s, and I’m very grateful that I went in that direction, and that I came to a point where my film career and my activism began to overlap, and I began to make movies that reflected my concerns and issues.”
Asked if she has concerns for her grandchildren, Fonda passionately reels off a roll-call of issues.
“Oh my God. I hope that they’ll be able to go outside without dying. I hope that the world won’t be so hot that human beings literally can’t go outside. That’s happening already in parts of the world,” she says. “I hope that there won’t be complete chaos, and tyrants running the world.
“I hope they’ll be able to get jobs, I hope they’ll be able to feel that their lives have meaning and feel they’ve accomplished something; those things are becoming so much harder than they were when I was coming up.
“But I would say, ‘Don’t give up: if you work at it, and live with intention, it’s gonna get better; stay curious and keep learning’.”
So if this is the third act, is it the last?
“Well, I guess, I’m 80, I have every intention of living beyond 90, and since I’ve divided acts into three decades, 90 would, I guess, be the beginning of the epilogue,” she giggles. “It won’t be an act because I won’t live to 120. But it will be a coda. It will be called Conclusion.”
An Evening with Jane Fonda, August 28, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne.
Tickets: artscentremelbourne.com.au
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