Jane Fonda

Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress and activist. 

Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards. Fonda also received the Honorary Palme d'Or in 2007, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2014, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2017, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2021, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2025.

Born to socialite Frances Ford Seymour and actor Henry Fonda, she made her acting debut with the 1960 Broadway play There Was a Little Girl, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and made her screen debut the same year in the romantic comedy Tall Story (1960). She rose to prominence with the comedies Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (1963), Cat Ballou (1965), Barefoot in the Park (1967), and Barbarella (1968). Her first husband was Barbarella director Roger Vadim. A seven-time Oscar nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and went on to establish herself as one of the most acclaimed actresses of her generation, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress for her roles as a prostitute in the thriller Klute (1971) and the woman in love with a Vietnam War veteran in the drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), and The Morning After (1986). Consecutive hits Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), California Suite (1978), The Electric Horseman (1979), and 9 to 5 (1980) sustained Fonda's box-office drawing power, and she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for The Dollmaker (1984).

In 1982, she released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling VHS ever. It would be the first of 22 such videos over the next 13 years, which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Divorced from second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting, following a row of commercially unsuccessful films concluded by Stanley & Iris (1990). Fonda divorced Turner in 2001 and returned to screens with the hit comedy Monster-in-Law (2005). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after 46-year absence from the stage, in 33 Variations, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, and released another five exercise videos between 2009 and 2012. Subsequent films have included This Is Where I Leave You (2014), Youth (2015), Our Souls at Night (2017), Book Club (2018), and 80 for Brady (2023). From 2015 to 2022, Fonda starred in Netflix's comedy series Grace and Frankie, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

Fonda was a political activist in the counterculture era during the Vietnam War. She was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, during which she gained the nickname "Hanoi Jane". Fonda protested the Iraq War along with violence against women, and she describes herself as a feminist and environmental activist.[4] Fonda has co-founded the Hollywood Women's Political Committee in 1984 and the Women's Media Center in 2005. Fonda is also known for her exercise videos, starting with Jane Fonda's Workout (1982), which became the highest-selling pre-recorded video cassette of its time.

Spouses

• Roger Vadim, (m. 1965; div. 1973)​
• Tom Hayden, (m. 1973; div. 1990)​
• Ted Turner, (m. 1991; div. 2001)​

Partner Richard Perry (2009–2017)
Children 3, including Troy Garity and Mary Williams (de facto adopted)

Parents

• Henry Fonda (father)
• Frances Ford Seymour (mother)

Relatives

• Peter Fonda (brother)
• Bridget Fonda (niece)

Marriages and relationships

Fonda writes in her autobiography that she lost her virginity at age 18 to actor James Franciscus. 
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she dated automobile racing manager Giovanni Volpi,producers José Antonio Sainz de Vicuña and Sandy Whitelaw as well as actors Warren Beatty, Peter Mann, Christian Marquand and William Wellman Jr. 
During this time, she often bearded for closeted homosexuals, including dancer Timmy Everett, theater director Andreas Voutsinas and actor Earl Holliman.

Fonda and her first husband, French film director Roger Vadim, became an item in December 1963 and married on August 14, 1965, at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. The couple had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim, born on September 28, 1968, in Boulogne-Billancourt and named after actress and activist Vanessa Redgrave. Separation reports surfaced in March 1970, which Fonda's spokesman called "totally untrue", though by mid-1972 she was conceding: "We're separated. Not legally, just separated. We're friends." In the early 1970s, Fonda had affairs with political organizer Fred Gardner and Klute co-star Donald Sutherland.

On January 19, 1973, three days after obtaining a divorce from Vadim in Santo Domingo, Fonda married activist Tom Hayden in a free-form ceremony at her home in Laurel Canyon. She had become involved with Hayden the previous summer and was three months pregnant when they married. Their son, Troy O'Donovan Garity, was born on July 7, 1973, in Los Angeles and was given his paternal grandmother's maiden name, as the names "Fonda and Hayden carried too much baggage."
Fonda and Hayden named their son for Nguyễn Văn Trỗi, the Viet Cong member who had attempted to assassinate US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Hayden chose O'Donovan as the middle name after Irish revolutionary Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa. 
In 1982, Fonda and Hayden unofficially adopted an African-American teenager, Mary Luana Williams (known as Lulu), whose parents were Black Panthers. 
Fonda and Hayden separated over the Christmas holiday of 1988 and divorced on June 10, 1990, in Santa Monica. 

In 1989, while estranged from Hayden, Fonda had a seven-month relationship with soccer player Lorenzo Caccialanza. She was linked with actor Rob Lowe that same year.

Fonda married her third husband, cable television tycoon and CNN founder Ted Turner, on December 21, 1991, at a ranch near Capps, Florida, about 20 miles east of Tallahassee. The pair separated in 2000 and divorced on May 22, 2001, in Atlanta. Seven years of celibacy followed, then from 2007 to 2008 Fonda was the companion of widower and management consultant Lynden Gillis. In mid-2009, Fonda began a relationship with record producer Richard Perry. It ended in January 2017. 

That December, when asked what she had learned about love, Fonda told Entertainment Tonight: "Nothing. I'm not cut out for it!"

In a 2018 interview, Fonda stated that up to age 62, she always felt she had to seek the validation of men in order to prove to herself that she had value as a person, something she attributes to her mother's early death leaving her without a female role model. As a consequence, she attached herself to "alpha males", some of whom reinforced her feelings of inadequacy, despite her professional success. Fonda said that she came to see that attitude as a failing of the men in her life: "Some men have a hard time realizing that the woman they're married to is strong and smart and they have to diminish that, because it makes them feel diminished. Too bad we have defined masculinity in such a way that it's so easily shamed." 

In 2018 she said, "I'm not dating anymore, but I did up until a couple of years ago. I'm 80; I've closed up shop down there."