Birth Name :Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda
Nickname : Hanoi Jane
Lady Jane (childhood)
Height : 5' 8" (1.73 m)
Mini Biography
Born in New York City in 1937 to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl". Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio.
Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) opposite Anthony Perkins marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards (for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978)) and five Oscar nominations (for Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Julia (1977), The Morning After (1986) and On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father).
Her professional success contrasted with her personal life, which was often laden with scandal and controversy. After starring in such lightweight but well-received movies as Cat Ballou (1965) and Barefoot in the Park (1967), she appeared in several risqué movies (including Barbarella (1968), directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim) was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the "Jane Fonda's Workout Book". She and Hayden divorced, and she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991.
Film actress, activist. Born on December 21, 1937, in New York City, New York. She attended Vassar College, left to study art in Paris, returned to New York to dabble in modeling, and then began a stage career. In 1955 she co-starred with her father, Henry Fonda, in a production of The Country Girl.
Her screen debut was in Tall Story (1960). She had a brief phase as a sex kitten under the direction of her French filmmaker husband Roger Vadim, but after divorcing him she commenced an entirely new phase as a serious actress and committed radical. She married the political militant, Tom Hayden, took a lead in opposing the Vietnam War (earning the nickname Hanoi Jane because she traveled to the Communist capital and posed for pictures there), and became increasingly identified as a spokesperson on issues of civil rights and women's rights. At the same time she continued her screen career and won Oscars as best actress in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978). One of her finest moments came when she produced and appeared in On Golden Pond (1982), which gave her father his Oscar-winning role.
In the 1980s she embarked on a new venture, becoming immensely successful with a series of aerobic-exercise videos. She divorced her husband and married media mogul Ted Turner (divorced 2001) and turned her attention to environmental issues. In 2005 she published an autobiography, My Life So Far, and returned to the film screen with Monster-in-Law. Fonda also played the title character in the film Georgia Rule with Lindsay Lohan.
Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda had undergone nearly as many transformations throughout her career as a cat has lives, with each new phase of her life – however scandalous or controversial – keeping the public eternally fascinated. As the daughter of film legend Henry Fonda, she parlayed the family name into a movie career that began with "Tall Story" (1960). Her comedic role in "Cat Ballou" (1965) was followed by a full-fledged metamorphosis into a 1960s sex kitten, as embodied in decadent French director and then-husband Roger Vadim's "Barbarella" (1968). Disturbed by her sexual exploitation, Fonda recreated herself as the cause-conscious champion of Black Panthers, Native Americans and anti-war activists, and her visit to North Vietnam in 1972 earned her the lasting enmity of the Right, who venomously dubbed her "Hanoi Jane." But she was able to shake off such abuse with successful films like "Coming Home" (1978) and "9 to 5" (1980), while making another career turn as "Queen of the Exercise Video," when her aerobic workout tapes helped popularize at-home exercise, raking in millions. Though she retired from acting in 1990 and primarily came to be known for her less-than-idyllic marriage to cable tycoon Ted Turner, Fonda re-emerged in 2005 to reactivate her career, cementing her place as one of Hollywood’s truly iconic actresses.
Born in New York, NY on Dec. 21 1937, Fonda's childhood required staying in her pathologically cold father's good graces, where having a perfect body and being "on the winning team" were of primary importance, while emotional expression was met with disgust and disdain. When she was 12, her 42-year-old mother, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, slashed her own throat with a razor – the actress was told that she had died of heart failure, but learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class. A year later, Fonda began seriously hating her own body, resulting in bulimia and an addiction to Dexedrine that persisted well into her forties. Meanwhile, she was sent to the all-girls Emma Willard boarding school in Troy, N.Y., and despite initially resisting entry into her legendary father's profession, Fonda appeared with him in the Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl” (1954). Following boarding school, she attended Vassar College, but left to go to Paris and study painting. Upon her return, Fonda began a modeling career, appearing on the covers of Esquire, Vogue and Ladies’ Home Journal.
Now convinced that acting was her path, Fonda began studying her craft at the Actors Studio with famed coach Lee Strasberg in 1958. Soon, she embarked on her film career by co-starring in Joshua Logan's movie version of the Broadway play "Tall Story" (1960), co-starring Anthony Perkins. That same year, the film was released she was nominated for Broadway's 1960 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for "There Was a Little Girl." Early films like George Cukor's "The Chapman Report" (1962) hinted at her promise and she was quickly cast in several more films. In 1963, Fonda returned to France to work on a film with director René Clément, "Les Félins" (1964), where she met and fell in love with Roger Vadim, a Parisian intellectual horrified by anything that smacked of the bourgeois. Vadim encouraged Fonda – whom he married in 1965 – to rid herself of supposedly outmoded qualities like sexual jealousy by introducing her to polygamous encounters and remaking her image into the type of "sex kitten" that populated his risqué films. Meanwhile, Fonda showed glimpses of maturity in Arthur Penn's "The Chase" (1966) and added to her range in movies like Otto Preminger's "Hurry Sundown" (1966) and Gene Saks' adaptation of the Neil Simon play "Barefoot in the Park" (1967), opposite Robert Redford.
However, it was not until she was truly independent of both her father and Vadim – who helmed her big-haired, pouty-lipped sex symbol turn in the sci-fi satire and 1960s pop culture artifact "Barbarella” – that she became more resolute and aggressive; consequently, becoming one of the best young actresses around. As a hard-as-nails babe in Sydney Pollack's "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (1969), Fonda helped make the compelling tale of a Depression era dance marathon an existential allegory of life with a riveting, unblinkingly fierce nihilism. She earned her first Best Actress Oscar nomination for the role. The shift in her acting direction coincided with a radical new socio-political phase in her personal life. Reports of the Vietnam War, unfiltered through U.S. media, shocked her social circle in France, and her mentor Simone Signoret brought Fonda to a Paris antiwar rally to hear famed leftist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and others. The actress, who was looking for an escape from the "permissive, indolent life" she had led with her soon-to-collapse union with Vadim, threw herself into the anti-war movement – as well as supporting Native American causes and the Black Panther Party – cut her hair into a trendsetting brown shag, and redirected her acting energies.
In Alan J Pakula's "Klute" (1971), Fonda really came into her own. The much-matured actress built on her previous role, winning a Best Actress Oscar for the complex study of an emotionally unstable prostitute. Fonda, for the first time, evinced a star's greatness on screen. But despite subsequent triumphs, she would never top her superb performance as Bree Daniels in "Klute.” In 1970, she took her revolutionary role to heart, going on the road, visiting GI coffeehouses, and marching and speaking, which prompted the FBI to closely monitor her. She was arrested on drug charges that were later dropped. She met antiwar activist Tom Hayden – then a counter-culture lightning rod for political change. They subsequently married in 1973 just days after her divorce from Vadim. Meanwhile, in 1972, Fonda made her infamous journey to Hanoi, North Vietnam, which perhaps engraved her in the American consciousness more deeply than any of her films. Carried away by singing a song she had memorized for the Vietnamese people, Fonda found herself in the seat of a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun, where she was snapped in a highly publicized photograph. The image caused a furor in the United States, and prompted an ill will toward the actress among Vietnam veterans and supporters of the war that would linger and haunt the actress for the remainder of her life.
Following her revolutionary interlude, during which she dabbled in writing, directing and for the first time producing, Fonda returned to mainstream success with her portrayal of Lillian Hellman that was the firm but anxious center of the biopic, "Julia" (1976). Although she clearly admired and identified with the searching, feisty, liberal role she was playing, she managed to alienate Hellman with the left-handed compliment that the writer was a homely woman who carried herself like Marilyn Monroe. "California Suite" (1978) teamed her with Alan Alda, another scion of a showbiz family, and allowed the actress to show off her new exercise-fit body as a precursor to her reign as a workout guru. “Coming Home" (1978), the first feature from her production company IPC, offered powerful insight into the effect of the Vietnam War on people at home and won her a second Best Actress Oscar.
IPC would produce "The China Syndrome" (1979), in which she played an ambitious reporter who happens to witness a near-meltdown of a nuclear power plant – a fortuitously released film that managed to cash in on the hysteria over a nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island just weeks after it appeared in theaters. Meanwhile, she co-starred in "9 to 5" (1981), a zany comedy about the conditions faced by working women, which co-starred Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton and grossed more than $100 million. The success of the film and Parton’s title song turned into the short-lived sitcom, “9 to 5” (ABC, 1981-84), that Fonda produced and appeared on. Finally, after a few decades of waiting, she had the chance to act with her father for the first time on film in "On Golden Pond" (1981), which earned him a long overdue Best Actor Oscar – she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress – while enabling father and daughter to rehabilitate their relationship for posterity, leaving nary a dry eye in the house. The senior Fonda died shortly after his daughter proudly collected his trophy at the 1982 Oscar ceremony.
Of Fonda's subsequent films of that era, only "The Morning After" (1986) met with the kind of response to which she had grown accustomed, earning her another Best Actress Oscar nomination. "Rollover" (1981), with Alan J. Pakula as director, was pretentious and incomprehensible, while "Agnes of God" (1985) failed to make the transition from stage to screen. Away from the cineplex, Fonda and Hayden bought a 200-acre ranch north of Santa Barbara, where they established a performing arts camp for children of all backgrounds that operated from 1977 to 1991. In 1979, after injuring her foot on “The China Syndrome,” Fonda began working on aerobics and strength training with Leni Cazden. Fonda captured lightening in a bottle when she released her first exercise video, “The Jane Fonda Workout” (1982). It sold over 17 million copies on its way to becoming the best-selling home video ever, as well as created a fitness sensation among the baby boomer generation. All throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Fonda released numerous exercise videos, workout books and audio programs that spawned a second career and helped usher in a new wave of health consciousness – as well as a fashion trend for stripped leotards and leg warmers. Despite the professional heights, Fonda suffered personal loss when she split with Hayden in 1988.
Her next film, "Old Gringo" (1989) – despite excellent performances from Fonda, Gregory Peck and Jimmy Smits – failed to find an audience. Even working with the esteemed Robert De Niro in the romantic drama "Stanley & Iris" (1991) did little to ignite her career. Then in 1991, Fonda married Atlanta-based media mogul Ted Turner on her 54th birthday and subsequently announced her retirement from film acting, distancing herself from the Hollywood community. She took over the Turner Foundation and worked tirelessly on issues of population control, children's health, adolescent reproductive health and sexuality, including launching the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. For her 60th birthday, Turner gave his wife a $10-million charitable foundation. Although she later revealed that Turner was unfaithful only a month into the marriage, on the surface they seemed a happy, committed couple for nearly a decade before their split in 2000. Meanwhile, Fonda's Hollywood connection dwindled to a few high-profile, dressed-to-the-nines visits on Turner's arm to major events like the Academy Awards.
After an all-too lengthy absence from the big screen, Fonda made a welcome return in the comedy "Monster-In-Law" (2005) in a hilarious, vanity-free tour-de-force performance as an aggressive, much-married broadcast journalist who has lost her job and whose mental breakdown prompts her to take malicious action to prevent her only son's impending marriage to a sweet-natured temp (Jennifer Lopez). She also released a well-timed memoir, My Life So Far, in which she frankly detailed her contentious relationship with her father, her eating disorders and addictions, and her lifelong propensity to reshape herself to suit the men in her life. She also candidly made apologies for her Hanoi excursion, writing "I realize that it is not just a U.S. citizen laughing and clapping on a [North] Vietnamese antiaircraft gun: I am Henry Fonda's privileged daughter who appears to be thumbing my nose at the country that has provided me these privileges." She was, however, still unable to shake the Hanoi Jane moniker. Meanwhile, she turned in another sassy performance with “Georgia Rule” (2007), playing Georgia, the hard-nosed grandmother of an uncontrollable teenager (Lindsay Lohan) sent by her mother (Felicity Huffman) to her Iowa farm for some down-home discipline, thanks to Georgia’s unbreakable and nonnegotiable rules. But while her feisty and carefree granddaughter stands to learn a thing or two, she unearths buried family secrets that will – regardless of what happens – bring all three women closer together.
* Also Credited As:
Jane Seymour Fonda
* Born:
Jane Seymour Fonda on December 21, 1937 in New York City, New York, USA
* Job Titles:
Actor, Producer, Director, Entrepreneur, Model, Screenwriter
Family
* Brother: Peter Fonda. Best known for starring in and producing Easy Rider (1968) and for his Academy Award nominated role in Ulee s Gold (1997)
* Daughter: Vanessa Vadim. Born in 1968; father, Roger Vadim; named after Fonda s friend Vanessa Redgrave
* Father: Henry Fonda. A highly acclaimed Academy Award-winning actor; best known for his roles in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), War and Peace (1956), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and opposite his daughter in On Golden Pond (1981); died Aug. 12, 1982
* Granddaughter: Viva. Born c. 2003; mother is daughter, Vanessa Vadim
* Grandson: Malcolm. Born c. 2000; mother is daughter, Vanessa Vadim
* Mother: Frances Seymour Brokaw. Committed suicide on Oct. 14, 1950, when Jane was 12 years old
* Niece: Bridget Fonda. Born in 1964; daughter of Peter Fonda
* Son: Troy Garity. Born in 1973; father Tom Hayden; named after a Vietnamese resistance leader and given paternal grandmother s surname; portrayed his father in Steal This Movie (2000), a biopic about Abbie Hoffman
Significant Others
* Companion: Donald Sutherland. Co-starred together in Klute (1971); together in the early 1970s
* Companion: Lynden Gillis. Began dating in 2007, after meeting at a book signing; no longer together
* Companion: Richard Perry. Began dating in June 2009 after being set up by actress Carrie Fisher; reportedly planning to marry
* Husband: Roger Vadim. Began dating in 1963; married from 1965 to 1973; died Feb. 11, 2000
* Companion: Alexander Whitelaw. six years her senior; involved at time of her feature debut, Tall Story
* Companion: Barry Matalon.
* Companion: Donald Sutherland. co-starred in Klute ; together in the early 1970s
* Companion: Lorenzo Caccialanza. Italian
Education
* Actors Studio, New York, NY
Milestones
* 1954 Debut as stage actress at Omaha Community Theatre in The Country Girl ; appeared with father Henry Fonda
* 1959 Appeared as a model on the covers of such magazines as Esquire, Vogue, Ladies Home Journal, Glamour and McCall s
* 1960 Film acting debut, Tall Story
* 1960 Made Broadway debut in There Was a Little Girl ; received Tony Award nomination as Featured Actress (Dramatic)
* 1962 Earned first Golden Globe playing a prostitute in A Walk on the Wild Side
* 1964 First of four collaborations with director and future husband Roger Vadim, Circle of Love
* 1965 Played the title role in Cat Ballou ; its success led to her being able to demand a salary equal to that of her father
* 1966 First of four collaborations with Robert Redford, The Chase
* 1967 Starred opposite Redford in movie adaptation of Neil Simon s Barefoot in the Park
* 1968 Acted with brother Peter Fonda in the Vadim-directed episode of Metzengerstein
* 1968 Directed by husband Vadim in the science fiction spoof Barbarella
* 1969 Earned first Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for Sydney Pollack s They Shoot Horses, Don t They?
* 1971 Gave an Oscar winning performance as Bree Daniels in Klute
* 1972 Co-produced, co-wrote and acted in the feature film, FTA/Free the Army/Fuck the Army
* 1972 Earned the nickname Hanoi Jane while visiting North Vietnam
* 1974 Co-directing debut, Introduction to the Enemy
* 1974 Formed the production company I.P.C. (Indo-China Peace Campaign) with Tom Hayden and Bruce Gilbert
* 1977 Returned to features in Fred Zinnemann s Julia ; first screen collaboration with Vanessa Redgrave
* 1978 Earned second Best Actress Oscar for Coming Home
* 1979 Again co-starred with Redford in The Electric Horseman
* 1979 Founded her fitness company, Workout Inc.; opened first aerobics studio
* 1979 Received an Oscar nomination for her role in The China Syndrome ; co-starring Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas
* 1980 Co-starred in one of her biggest commercial successes to date, the comedy Nine to Five with Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton
* 1981 Acted for first and only time with father (his role won him the Best Actor Oscar) in the feature, On Golden Pond
* 1982 Executive produced the ABC sitcom version of 9 to 5
* 1982 Released first exercise video, Jane Fonda s Workout
* 1984 Delivered Emmy-winning performance in ABC TV-movie The Dollmaker
* 1985 Played the role of Dr. Martha Livingston in the feature adaption of Agnes of God opposite Meg Tilly in the title role
* 1986 Earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of an alcoholic murder suspect in the thriller The Morning After
* 1989 First Fonda Films project The Old Gringo flopped; starred with Gregory Peck and Jimmy Smits
* 1990 Last feature film (to date) as actor, Stanley & Iris
* 1992 Announced her retirement from acting to spend more time with third husband Ted Turner
* 2001 Returned to acting for one-night only appearing in a gala benefit staging of The Vagina Monologues at Madison Square Garden in NYC
* 2005 Published her autobiography My Life So Far
* 2005 Returned to acting after a fourteen year hiatus to star opposite Jennifer Lopez in Monster-in-Law
* 2006 Received a six-figure contract with L Oreal Paris Age Re-Perfect cream, which is aimed at women over 65 (Fonda was 68)
* 2007 Played Lindsay Lohan s grandmother in the Garry Marshall directed Georgia Rule
* 2009 Returned to Broadway after 45 years to play a present-day musicologist in Moises Kaufman s 33 Variations ; earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Play
* After college moved to Paris to study painting and languages
* Formed production company, Fonda Films, in late 1980s