- Handlers Thought This Owl Was Male For 23 Years —Then He Laid An Egg.
- Bridget Jane Fonda was born in Los Angeles, California, to Susan Brewer and actor Peter Fonda.She is the granddaughter of Henry Fonda and niece of Jane Fonda, both famous actors.Bridget made her film debut at age five as an extra in Easy Rider (1969), but first became interested in acting after appearing in a high school production of 'Harvey.' At age 18, she enrolled at New York University.
- Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, political activist, environmentalist, and former fashion model. She is the recipient of v.
Jane Fonda (born 1937) was a member of a famous American theatrical family and recipient of the industry's highest awards. Her numerous radical activities during the period of the Vietnam War brought animosity from some and adoration from others. In the post-Vietnam era, her multi-faceted career included films, television, exercise videocassettes, and writing. Jane Fonda is a famous hollywood actress who rose to prominence in the 1960s with films like ‘Barbarella’ and ‘Cat Ballou’. This biography of Jane Fonda provides detailed information about her childhood, life, achievements, works & timeline.
Jane Fonda has had an incredible onscreen career spanning six decades, bringing her plenty of accolades (think seven Oscar nominations, including two wins) and a net worth of an estimated $200 million. But the legendary actor hasn't been so lucky offscreen. In fact, from a young age, Fonda's life has been tainted by tragedy.
As the star told People in 2017, she had some pretty dire predictions for herself early on. 'I never pictured 30,' an 80-year-old Fonda confessed, explaining, 'I assumed I wouldn't live very long and that I would die lonely and an addict of some sort. I didn't think if I did live this long, that I would be vibrant and healthy and still working.' Which is, of course, exactly what happened. But it wasn't a smooth journey by any means.
From her family life to her love life and her health, Jane Fonda has had to endure more challenges than most — and she's risen to meet every single one of them. These are the tragic details of her life.
As a child, Jane Fonda watched her mother struggle
As a child, Jane Fonda experienced her mother, socialite Frances Ford Seymour, struggling with bipolar disorder — which, as the actress told People, affected her greatly. Sharing that she 'never really knew' her mom, Fonda explained how having 'a parent who is not capable of showing up, not capable of reflecting you back through eyes of love, it has a big impact on your sense of self.'
In addition to a private battle with mental illness (Jane didn't learn the truth about her mother's diagnosis until much later), Seymour also suffered in marriage. As Country Living notes, she met Henry Fonda in 1936 on the set of Wings of the Morning. The second of Henry's five wives, she had to deal with her husband focusing on work, then spending three years serving in the Navy during World War II, then reportedly seeking companionship elsewhere. The Daily Mail once dubbed Henry 'cold and a bully,' as well as 'a shameless womaniser.' As Jane told People, her 'family was falling apart' before she hit her teens. 'My mother at that time was in and out of mental institutions and my father was seeing another woman just [seven years] older than me,' she recalled.
According to Country Living, Henry asked for a divorce in 1949, which led to Seymour entering a psychiatric hospital and dying by suicide four months later on her 42nd birthday. Jane was 12.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Jane Fonda blamed herself for her mother's death
Following Frances Ford Seymour's death by suicide, Henry Fonda told their children, Jane and Peter Fonda, that she had a heart attack. It wasn't until the following year that Jane learned the truth, when 'a girlfriend passed me a movie magazine, in which it said that my mother had cut her throat,' she recalled during Oprah's Master Class. She immediately put the blame on herself, according to The Guardian.
One particular incident made it especially hard for Fonda to forgive herself. As the Daily Mail reported, when Seymour visited home from the hospital, a 12-year-old Jane 'hid' from her. It was during that visit that Seymour reportedly grabbed the razor she would use to take her life the following week. 'Of course I thought, if I had gone downstairs and seen her that day that she came to the house, then she wouldn't have killed herself. It was my fault,' Jane told Winfrey. '... I went through life with a lot of guilt.'
While she admitted to TheGuardian in 2016 that 'dealing with what happened to [her] mother isn't over,' Jane did tell Winfrey that seeing her mother's medical records helped. 'One of the most important things that I learned is that she had been sexually abused,' she shared. 'Everything fell into place. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how sorry I was ... but also, I was able to forgive myself. It had nothing to do with me.'
Jane Fonda had a troubled relationship with her father
Jane Fonda's relationship with her father, Henry Fonda, was equally difficult. Although she told The Guardian that she 'adored' her famous father, whom she'd dubbed 'a good man with wonderful integrity,' Jane revealed that their relationship exactly mimicked their roles in their 1981 movie, On Golden Pond.
'The character he played was just like him in life, someone who had a hard time expressing his feelings and his emotions,' Jane shared. Henry was often away from home, and following their mother's passing, Jane and brother Peter Fonda were sent off to boarding school. When Henry and Jane did spend time together, they didn't speak about her mother, he never offered any acting advice — 'I wish he had!' she said to The Hollywood Reporter — and they disagreed on her activism. 'I tried to make him understand,' Jane told The Guardian of her Vietnam War protests. 'He just couldn't.'
As Jane told Oprah Winfrey, her father remained set in his ways until the very end. 'Sitting by my father's bedside as he was dying, he wouldn't say anything,' she revealed. 'Of course, I wished he would. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, and I wanted to ask him questions.' Sharing how she 'told him that I loved him and I knew he'd done it the best that he could,' Jane said her father did become emotional, but refused to open up. Even so, she concluded, 'I do know that he is with me ... I feel his energy.'
Jane Fonda battled bulimia for decades due to her father's words
Jane Fonda's strained relationship with her father had a profound effect on her health. Noting how Henry Fonda 'had an obsession with women being thin' in her 2005 memoir, My Life So Far (via The Guardian), Jane wrote, 'Once I hit adolescence, the only time my father ever referred to how I looked was when he thought I was too fat.' Speaking with Harper's Bazaar, she elaborated, 'I was taught by my father that how I looked was all that mattered, frankly.' Underscoring that 'he was a good man,' Jane claimed, 'He sent messages to me that fathers should not send: 'Unless you look perfect, you're not going to be loved.'
Jane became bulimic in her teens and struggled for decades. 'I wasn't very happy from, I would say, puberty to 50,' she told Harper's Bazaar. After 25 years of battling bulimia, she just 'stopped' at age 46. She explained to The Conversation, 'It was like the equivalent of a dry drunk.' Noting that she 'began to heal' through working out, Jane said, 'Then I started taking Prozac and that helped with the anxiety, and then I had a nervous breakdown ... I said out loud, 'If God wants me to be in this much pain, there must be a reason.'
It was at that moment that the self-professed Atheist found healing in religion: 'I realized I'd been broken open. Something happened to me. Something began to change.'
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorder Association's Helpline at 1-800-931-2237 or chat with one of their helpline volunteers on NEDA's website.
Jane Fonda has 'had a lot of cancer'
Jane Fonda's health struggles reach far beyond her battle with bulimia. In 2010, she had a breast cancer scare and, according to People, needed to have 'a small tumor' removed. Luckily, her rep told the mag that she was '100 percent cancer-free. She's completely fine and it's business as usual for her.' But it wasn't the first time that Fonda had to undergo life-saving surgery.
As she told British Vogue in 2019, 'I've had a lot of cancer.' Explaining that she was once 'a sun-worshipper,' Fonda continued, 'When I have a day off, I frequently go to my skin doctor and have things cut off me by a surgeon.' Revealing that her health is 'an ongoing process,' the actor shared an example of her secret struggles, revealing that 'the strange white dress with all the ruffles' she wore to the 2016 Golden Globes was chosen specifically because, 'I'd just had a mastectomy and I had to cover my bandages.'
The Grace and Frankie star also revealed that she's been battling osteoporosis due to her genetics: 'My father had it, my brother [Peter] had it.' This has resulted in two hip replacement surgeries, as well as one knee replacement and a second on the way.
Jane Fonda's first husband secretly spent her inheritance
In the early 1960s, Jane Fonda moved to France in an effort to, as Vanity Fair put it, break out from 'her father's shadow.' While there, she met film director Roger Vadim (10 years her senior, he had previously discovered and married Brigitte Bardot), and a love affair ensued. 'I thought my heart would burst,' Fonda said of their union. The couple moved in together and, although their lifestyles were often at odds, they married in 1965.
From then until their divorce in 1973, Fonda would find herself doing a lot against her will. Like agreeing to an open marriage — 'I didn't want to be alone,' she explained in her memoir, My Life So Far, writing (via Vanity Fair), 'I still felt that it was my relationship with him, however painful, that validated me' — and giving her husband access to the $150,000 inheritance she received from her mother. The outlet described Vadim as 'always in debt' and, as Fonda wrote in her memoir, he 'could not comprehend why I hesitated to give him large portions of it so he could hire a friend to come with us to some vacation spot and work with him on a script. At first I was horrified and said so. But over time I began to feel I was being petty and stingy. So I gave in.'
'Only years later did I realize that Vadim was a compulsive gambler,' Fonda continued, adding, 'Much of my mother's inheritance was simply gambled away.'
Jane Fonda's second husband belittled and controlled her
Just three days after her divorce from Roger Vadim was finalized, Jane Fonda tied the knot again. It was 1973 and she said 'I do' to American activist and politician Tom Hayden after connecting over their shared passion for activism. However, Fonda's second husband would reportedly soon prove to be a control freak and a womanizer. As the actor told The New Yorker, Hayden didn't want his family living in luxury. 'I had no dishwasher. I had no washing machine,' she revealed. What's more, according to the Daily Mail, she reportedly had to sell her Los Angeles home and move into a 'shabby two-bedroom shack,' and was forbidden from wearing her designer labels.
Hayden also pushed his wife to raise money to support his political campaigns and didn't make much of her efforts, even when she brought in millions. Creating Jane Fonda's Workout, the Barbarella star raised $17 million for Hayden, but as she confessed in her memoir (via The Guardian), her husband would often make 'disparaging remarks,' which she brushed off. 'I would just think, 'OK, I'm vain. [But] where else would you have got $17 million?'
Then 'he fell in love with somebody, and it really devastated me,' Fonda told the New Yorker. Following their 1990 divorce, Fonda confessed (via the Daily Mail) she put up with the belittlement, because she 'simply didn't think my ideas or feelings were as important or credible as his.'
Jane Fonda was 'eaten alive' during her third marriage
Just as Jane Fonda split from Tom Hayden, billionaire media mogul Ted Turner (the founder of CNN) entered her life. 'He swept me up, which he can do so well,' she recalled to The New Yorker. They married in 1991 and split in 2001, and although Fonda later said they had 'a great 10 years,' their union was a rocky one.
As she shared in her 2005 memoir, My Life So Far (via The Telegraph), Turner apparently had one thing in common with her exes: infidelity. Upon learning he had been unfaithful just one month after their wedding, Fonda became so angry, she hit her new husband in the head with a telephone. Her daughter, Mary Williams, even went as far as to claim in her own 2013 memoir that her mother was 'eaten alive' during the marriage.
Despite the heartbreak, it seems Turner may have been Fonda's last great love, as both have wondered what would have happened if they hadn't divorced. 'It was really hard to leave,' she confessed to The New Yorker. 'I was 62 years old and I had no career anymore. I didn't have to work, I was being looked after. And yet I knew that, if I stayed, I was never going to become who I'm meant to be as a whole person, as a really authentic person.' The film star shared a similar sentiment with British Vogue, noting she's learned that her 'failing' is 'that when I'm with a man, I give up myself.'
Jane Fonda's biggest passion has often been mocked
In addition to her love of acting, Jane Fonda has been a proud activist for decades (she's even been repeatedly arrested), but not everyone has taken her seriously — starting with her father. Speaking with The Guardian, Fonda (who started her activism career by supporting the Black Panthers in the 1960s) revealed that her father 'was the reason I became an activist,' but even so, 'for a while he thought I was a foolish, frivolous person.' And when she joined the protests against America's involvement in the Vietnam War in the '70s, they simply weren't on the same page.
Despite Henry Fonda's apparent disapproval, public scrutiny would soon prove to be much worse. In 1972, Jane visited North Vietnam and, as TIME notes, the trip would become the 'most famous — or infamous — part of her activist career.' While there, Jane posed for a photo sitting atop an anti-aircraft gun, which was interpreted as her being willing to 'shoot down American planes.' While she apologized multiple times and wrote in her memoir that the implication of the image didn't hit her until after it was taken and that she was assured it wouldn't be published, it still garnered heavy criticism and earned her the nickname 'Hanoi Jane.'
My Life So Far
'It hurts me and it will to my grave that I made a huge, huge mistake that made a lot of people think I was against the soldiers,' she told The Frederick News-Post in 2015.
Jane Fonda Memoir
Jane Fonda had a nervous breakdown on the Grace and Frankie set
Jane Fonda isn't done with acting quite yet! In 2015, she signed on to star alongside pal Lily Tomlin in a new Netflix series titled Grace and Frankie, but the script hit a little too close to home. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Fonda admitted she 'had a nervous breakdown during the first season,' saying, 'I discovered it's because the very first episode our husbands tell us that they are going to leave us after 40 years and marry each other and that triggered abandonment.' Visibly getting emotional, she continued, 'It was a big trigger, and I didn't realize that a character in a comedy could actually trigger something very profound.'
It wasn't the first time the film legend admitted to having a 'nervous breakdown.' As she once told Oprah Winfrey, the same thing happened when her second marriage ended. 'I needed a wheelbarrow to carry my heart: I thought it weighed 10 pounds. I thought blood was coming through my skin,' Fonda explained. 'I would step outside and be shocked that the sky was still blue. How could the sky still be blue when life was such pain? I couldn't believe I could hurt so bad. I couldn't speak above a whisper.'
Recalling how she 'just sat at home' and 'wasn't living authentically,' Fonda revealed that the ordeal taught her an invaluable lesson: 'Don't give up. There are lessons to be learned even in the most horrendous pain. And you don't know that when you're young.'
Jane Fonda (born 1937) was a member of a famous American theatrical family and recipient of the industry's highest awards. Her numerous radical activities during the period of the Vietnam War brought animosity from some and adoration from others. In the post-Vietnam era, her multi-faceted career included films, television, exercise videocassettes, and writing.
Jane Fonda, her father Henry, and her brother Peter comprise the 'Fantastic Fondas' of the theater. Jane was born in New York City on December 21, 1937, to Henry and Frances Seymour Brokaw Fonda. Born into wealth, her maternal lineage can be traced to the American Revolution leader Samuel Adams. She herself became something of a revolutionary.
When Fonda was 13 her mother committed suicide after learning of her husband's interest in a much younger woman, Susan Blanchard. Told that her mother died from a sudden heart attack, Fonda learned the truth a year later from a magazine story. Both she and Peter had difficulty coping, although Fonda believes Blanchard, whom her father married, did much to provide a stable home life for them. Fonda attended schools in New York and Vassar College, where she admittedly 'went wild.' Thereafter, she engaged in a whirlwind of studies in Paris and New York. Her first stage appearance was in 1954, but she did not seriously decide on an acting career until four years later while visiting her father, who lived next door to Lee Strasberg, director of the Actors Studio in Malibu, California. Friends urged her to go into the profession; Strasberg accepted her as his student, and she paid for her acting lessons with a brief but successful modeling career.
Fonda probably inherited some theatrical genius; certainly hers was a meteoric rise to stardom. A number of persons influenced her career, including her godfather, Joshua Logan, first husband, Roger Vadim, and director Sidney Pollock. She received many of the industry's highest awards, including two Academy Awards for Best Actress (Klute, 1971, and Coming Home, 1979). Both came before her famous father received one and after she was a controversial figure for her lifestyle, her rejection of many American traditional beliefs, and her outspoken anti-Vietnam War views.
Fonda became a heroine of the New Left for her activities in such causes as constitutional rights for American servicemen, Black Panthers, Native American rights, the Vietnam War, the anti-nuclear movement, and women's rights. Her life reflected the uncertainties, confusion, and rapidly changing values which began to rock America in the mid-1960s. To many she seemed mercurial, contradictory, and driven as the fighter for justice and peace. To others, she was naive, irritating, and an anti-American fool. Her causes were so numerous and undiscriminating that Saul Alinsky, fellow American radical, claimed that Fonda was 'a hitchhiker on the highway of causes.'
Fonda's first act of civil disobedience came in 1970 when she was arrested for illegally talking to soldiers against the military. Her radicalization was completed by what she saw and the people she met on a cross-country journey. Having left California as a left-wing liberal, she arrived in New York where she announced that she was a revolutionary woman, ready to support all struggles that were radical.
Fonda's support and fund-raising for the sometimes violent Black Panthers, including her relationship with Panther leader Huey Newton, led the FBI to place her under surveillance. Meanwhile, many differences with her father became public. As a life-long liberal, he sympathized with many of her views, but emphatically rejected her methods. Jane, in turn, rejected his idea that changes could be effected by electing the right officials into public office.
Jane Fonda Book
As her activities increased, government surveillance grew to at least six agencies at one time. Returning from Canada, she was infuriated when U.S. customs officials in Cleveland confiscated vials thought to be drugs. They proved to be vitamins and non-prescription food concentrates which she used to stabilize her weight.
Critics decried Fonda's exaggerations of American atrocities in Vietnam, which even supporters admitted were inflated. Many were astonished when she spoke as if she had visited Vietnam and witnessed the horrors she described. Ultimately, supporters arranged for her to go to Hanoi. When she publicly denounced American involvement there, she was labeled a 'Communist' and 'Hanoi Jane' by many back home. The State Department rebuked her, letters of protest filled newspapers, and at least one congressman demanded her arrest for treason. Yet Fonda seemed unperturbed by it all.
As the Vietnam War was ending, Fonda's radicalism diminished. Reconciliation with her father came in the early 1980s as they filmed On Golden Pond, a story which paralleled their own relationship in many ways. By the mid-1980s Fonda's popularity in films and television was such that to speak ill of her in Hollywood was to invite professional suicide. Her exercise salon, books, and videotapes became so popular that she may be remembered as much for them as for her films.
By 1985 she rarely spoke for radical causes. Rather, she seemed to have mellowed considerably. On a CBS Morning News television program she spoke of a new spiritual awareness during the filming of Agnes of God, and on CBS's America her comments and dress were quite subdued as she 'plugged' her latest exercise videotape. She had moved from the radical to the respectable Jane Fonda.
Her personal life seemed stable as she and husband, former activist Tom Hayden, lived with her daughter Vanessa and their son Troy. Hayden sought a Senate seat from California in 1986, apparently both thinking that changes could be made by electing the 'right' officials. Although her interests seemed to lie with her multi-faceted career and family, it seemed likely that Fonda could return to her former radical activism if she perceived that conditions demanded it.
In 1988 the 'Hanoi Jane' issue raised its head again during filming of Stanley and Iris, which was being shot in a small Connecticut town. Old resentments among the towns-people about Fonda's role in Vietnam flared, leading her to issue her first public apology for her activities during the Vietnam War. She admitted that she'd been misinformed about aspects of the war, as well as some of her other causes at the time.
Fonda and Hayden were divorced in 1989. In 1991 she married media mogul Ted Turner, and settled into a much more domestic phase of her life. She announced that she was leaving her film career behind, and in 1996 confirmed that statement in a Good Housekeeping interview: 'After a 35-year career as an actress, I am out of the business. That's a big change. Work, in many ways, defined me.' Although she left behind her acting and producing career, Fonda was far from idle. In 1996 she published a cookbook, Jane Fonda: Cooking for Healthy Living. She also created a new series of workout tapes with the help of a physiologist called The Personal Trainer Series. Her goal with the new series was to design a program that anyone could stick with, stating in Good Housekeeping, 'Anybody can do 25 minutes.'
Further Reading on Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda Biography Book
Although both are unauthorized biographies, Jane Fonda: The Actress in Her Time by Fred L. Guiles (1982) and Jane: An Intimate Biography of Jane Fonda (1973) by Thomas Kiernan provide interesting additional insights into the life of Jane Fonda and the sub-title of each accurately describes the contents. James Brough's The Fabulous Fondas (1973) gives considerable attention to Jane's life, but she shares space there with her father Henry and brother Peter. Also see Christopher Anderson's Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda (1990) and Good Housekeeping (February 1996, page 24)