Who is Jane Fonda?

JANE Fonda has had a prolific acting career spanning more than six decades and has expanded her work to focus on activism against climate change and fossil fuels.

She is known for her roles in Grace and Frankie (2022), Monster-in-Law (2005), and Barbarella (1968).

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Who is Jane Fonda?

Jane Fonda, 84, stepped into the spotlight as a model in her mid-20s, first appearing on the cover of Glamour Magazine in 1959.

At only 20 years old, Fonda wasn’t sure where her career would go but took as many modeling jobs as she could and the following year she got her acting break in the 1960 film, Tall Story.

“… I didn’t know what my path would be until I was in my 30s,” Fonda said in an interview with Glamour. “If you’re curious and you’re healthy and you’re open, eventually who you are and where you’re supposed to be will come to you. And it could take a long time.”

Fonda became a household name in 1962 for her role in the film, Period of Adjustment, and continued to gain critical acclaim in the 1968 film Barbarella.

Fonda has starred in 62 films and TV episodes and has won two Oscar Awards, two Academy Awards, and two Bafta Awards.

The TV series, Grace and Frankie, cast Fonda as the co-lead, Grace, and while she didn’t have creative input in the script, she told Glamour she did contribute to the storyline when she wrote her bestselling book, Prime Time, which talked about getting older.

Fonda gave her book to the writers for inspiration so she could “weigh in quite a bit,” but she said it wasn’t for the writing process.

“… Just because you can write a book doesn’t mean you know anything about how to write a comedic sitcom—but about sex, about the problems of sex when you’re older and the joys and the possibilities and vibrators and all of that, and I think that maybe that helped inspire them,” she said.

Grace and Frankie ended its seven-season run on April 29, 2022, but Fonda still has other roles on the horizon. She is in the post-production of the film Moving On and is filming Eighty for Brady, and the voice of Dragon in the animated film, Luck.

Is Jane Fonda an activist?

Fonda has played an integral role in activism since the late 1960s and early 1970s when she opposed the Vietnam War and moved on to advocate for women’s rights and protested against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“I became an activist because of the Vietnam War, and I learned about why it started and what it meant. Then what does colonialism mean? Then what does racism mean? Then what? And suddenly the onion gets peeled back and you realize how the war is connected to everything else,” she told Glamour.

Fonda is continuing her activism in 2022 by speaking out against climate change, prompting her to found the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, a foundation that will strive to help elect leaders who will “stand up to the fossil fuel industry,” the website says.

“We’re dealing with the climate crisis, but we’re also dealing with the need for a new mentality, the need to look at everything as interconnected cosmos,” Fonda said.

“We all depend on each other and we have to protect each other—and that’s not just verbiage. This is an actual reality. We can’t live without the earth and we have to protect it. If we’re going to really solve the climate crisis, we also have to think and run our societies differently.”

Fonda is no stranger to fighting for what she believes in. She was arrested for the fifth time in 2019 for protesting against climate change in Washington, D.C. – it was her 82nd birthday.

She later wrote a book titled, What Can I Do? My Path from Climate Despair to Action, in which she called her arrest the “best birthday present ever.”

Fonda’s message to those who think their voice doesn’t make a difference is simple, “pay close attention to the victories.”

She added, “There are victories everywhere, and we have to celebrate those and allow those to remind us of what’s possible because they usually come from people who individually have no power but collectively have huge power.”

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What is Jane Fonda’s next move?

As Fonda enters her mid-80s, she says she is aware that she is nearing the end of her life but has no intention of slowing down.

“I’m super-conscious that I’m closer to death, and it doesn’t really bother me that much,” she said on CBS Sunday Morning.

“The fact is, if you’re alive and relatively healthy at an older – I mean, I’m almost 85,” Fonda said. “The fact that I’m still alive and working, wow, who cares if I don’t have my old joints? And I can’t ski or bike or run anymore? You know, you can be really old at 60, and you can be really young at 85.”

Now moving into what she calls the “third act” of her life, Fonda is focusing her activism efforts on challenging fossil fuel sycophants, which release mass quantities of carbon into the air, resulting in pollution and is the leading cause of climate change.

“We all depend on each other and we have to protect each other—and that’s not just verbiage. This is an actual reality,” Fonda told Glamour. “We can’t live without the earth and we have to protect it. If we’re going to really solve the climate crisis, we also have to think and run our societies differently.”

She added, “This is an emergency. It’s all we should be talking about.”

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