Jane Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Since the 1960s Fonda has appeared in several movies. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other awards and nominations. She initially announced her retirement from acting in 1991, and said for many years that she would never act again, but she returned to film in 2005 with Monster in Law, and later Georgia Rule released in 2007. She also produced and starred in several exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995.
Fonda has served as an activist for many political causes, one of the most notable and controversial of which was her opposition to the Vietnam War. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women. She describes herself as a liberal and a feminist. Since 2001, Fonda has been a Christian. She published an autobiography in 2005 and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue magazine twice. Fonda became interested in acting in 1954, while appearing with her father in a charity performance of The Country Girl, at the Omaha Community Theatre. After attending Vassar College in New York, she was introduced by her father to renowned drama teacher Lee Strasberg in 1958, and subsequently joined his Actors Studio.
Fonda in 1968's Barbarella, the role that made her into a universal sex symbolHer stage work in the late 1950s laid the foundation for her film career in the 1960s. She averaged almost two movies a year throughout the decade, starting in 1960 with Tall Story, in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. Period of Adjustment and Walk on the Wild Side followed in 1962. In A Walk on the Wild Side, Fonda played a prostitute, and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
In 1963, she appeared in Sunday in New York. Newsday called her "the loveliest and most gifted of all our new young actresses". However, she also had her detractors—in the same year, the Harvard Lampoon named her the "Year's Worst Actress". Fonda's career breakthrough came with Cat Ballou (1965), in which she played a schoolmarm turned outlaw. This comedy Western received five Oscar nominations and was one of the year's top ten films at the box office. It was considered by many to have been the film that brought Fonda to stardom at the age of twenty-eight. After this came the comedies Any Wednesday (1966) and Barefoot in the Park (1967), the latter co-starring Robert Redford.
In 1968, she played the lead 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? (1969) won her critical acclaim, and she earned her first Oscar nomination for the role. Fonda was very selective by the end of the 1960s, turning down lead roles in Rosemary's Baby and Bonnie and Clyde, films widely praised by critics and considered box-office successes.
Jane Fonda in KluteFonda won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1971, again playing a prostitute, the gamine Bree Daniel, in the detective murder mystery Klute. Her second Award was in 1978 for Coming Home, the story of a disabled Vietnam War veteran's difficulty in re-entering civilian life.
Between Klute in 1971 and Fun With Dick and Jane in 1977, Fonda spent most of the first half of the decade without a major film success, even though she appeared in films such as A Doll's House (1973), Steelyard Blues and The Blue Bird (1976). 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."[4] However, in her 2005 autobiography, My Life So Far, it would appear that she categorically rejects such simplification. "The suggestion 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."[5] From her own point of view it would appear that her absence from the silver screen was related more to the fact that her political activism provided a new focus in her life. By the same token her return to acting with a series of 'issue-driven' films was a reflection of this new focus. "When I hear admonitions ... warning outspoken actors to remember 'what happened to Jane Fonda back in the seventies', this has me scratching my head: And that what would be...?"
In 1972, Fonda starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's film Tout va bien. The film's directors then made Letter to Jane, in which the two spend nearly an hour discussing a news photograph of Fonda.
Through her production company, IPC Films, she produced films that helped return her to star status. The 1977 comedy film Fun With Dick and Jane is generally considered her "comeback" picture. She also received very positive reviews and an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of playwright Lillian Hellman in the 1977 film, Julia. During this period Fonda announced that she would make films only 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. She followed with popular and successful films such as The China Syndrome (1979), about a coverup of an accident in a nuclear power plant; and The Electric Horseman (1979) with her previous co-star, Robert Redford.
In 1980, Fonda starred in the office-politics comedy Nine to Five with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton. Her character was re-entering the workforce, after a divorce had devastated both her finances and self-confidence. The film was one of Fonda's greatest financial successes, contributing significantly to her wealth.
She had long wanted to work with her father, hoping it would help their strained relationship. She achieved this goal when she was cast as a supporting actress alongside Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond (1981). This film brought Henry Fonda his first Academy Award for Best Actor, which Jane accepted on his behalf, as he was ill and home bound. He died five months later.
Fonda continued appearing in feature films throughout the 1980s, most notably her role of Dr. Martha Livingston in Agnes of God. She finished off the decade by appearing in Old Gringo, for which she received a worst actress Razzie nomination.
In April 1991, after three decades in film, Fonda announced her retirement from the film industry. In May 2005, however, she returned to the screen, after a 14-year absence, with the box-office success Monster-in-Law, a comedy in which she played the manipulative prospective mother-in-law of Jennifer Lopez's character.
In July 2005, the British tabloid The Sun reported that when Fonda was asked if she would appear in a sequel to her 1980 hit Nine to Five, she replied "I'd love to."
Fonda's most recent project is the Garry Marshall-directed, Georgia Rule. Fonda starred along with Felicity Huffman, and Lindsay Lohan. The movie opened in theaters May 11, 2007.
In the course of her career, Fonda has received seven Oscar nominations, winning twice.
